Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, everyone. We're starting a few minutes later than normal. We have a pastor with us tonight, Tammy Anderson from the House of Hope Ministries. We thank you for being with us tonight, ma'am. She was actually delayed in a car accident and stuck in traffic a few minutes away. So we gracefully waited for a few minutes and got to be social. But now that the pastor's here, we're going to ask her to come up and lead us in the invocation and the pledge.

First of all, thank you for your patience. Let us pray. Gracious and eternal God, we come before you with humble hearts, recognizing that every good and perfect gift comes from you. Thank you for the city of Lynn Haven, for its residents, its families, its businesses, its neighborhoods, and for the opportunity to serve the community. Lord, we lift up the mayor and the city commissioners before you today. Grant them wisdom beyond their own understanding, discernment in every decision, courage to do what is right, and compassion for the people they have been entrusted to serve. Help them to listen carefully, consider every perspective fairly, and deliberate with integrity and respect. May their decisions be guided not by personal interests, political agendas, or division, but what will promote the safety, prosperity, unity, and well-being of the entire Lynn Haven community. your word reminds us in proverbs 2 6 for the lord giveth wisdom out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding we ask that you give our leaders that wisdom today bless the city staff first responders public servants volunteers and everyone who works to make lynn haven a place where people can live work raise families and thrive Where there are challenges, give them solutions. Where there are disagreements, give them understanding. Where there are difficult decisions, give them clarity. Where there are needs, give them compassion. And where there are opportunities, give them vision. Father God, let the business conducted in this meeting be productive respectful, transparent, and beneficial to the people of this community. May Lynn Haven continue to grow, not only in buildings and businesses, but in unity, opportunity, safety, and quality of life. We ask that you bless this meeting, bless every person gathered here, and bless the city of Lynn Haven. May your wisdom guide every conversation, your peace govern every decision, and your grace cover this community. In your holy and precious name, we do pray. Amen, amen, and amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Pastor Anderson, thank you again, ma'am, for coming tonight, braving traffic to come be with us. So thank you, ma'am. I appreciate your words of wisdom, and we could certainly use all the help we could get. With that, additions, deletions, modifications of agenda. First thing up, for those of you that were not here earlier for the CRA meeting, Commissioner Sam Peebles is out of the geographic area with the Navy in his civilian capacity, so he is dialed in tonight, and we allowed him to participate in the CRA meeting as such. Via speakerphone, I will ask for the same motion and second. for us to be able to allow him to participate by phone tonight.

Motion to allow Commissioner Peebles to participate by telecom.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any concerns or discussion of this request from the audience? Hearing none, City Manager.

Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Peebles?

Yes.

Commissioner Tender? Yes. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. 5-0. Thank you all for that. Beyond allowing Commissioner Peebles to participate remotely tonight, are there any other additions, deletions, or modification requests of the agenda?

Yes, Mayor. Item 12, Commissioner Peebles and Mr. Krebs still need to get together and modify a few things on that final reading. Us need to remove that one.

Okay, that sounds good. So that's still a work in progress, so nothing to report out tonight. Any other changes? Hearing none, shall we go, I guess we'll probably, we need a vote, correct, City Attorney, for the one amendment, dropping the one, item number 12?

Yes.

Okay, well, I'll ask for a motion and a second.

Motion to, I guess, remove item 12 from the agenda. Second.

Thank you, gentlemen. I have a motion and a second. Any concerns from the public on this? Okay, hearing none. City Manager?

Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Peebles?

Yes.

Commissioner Tender? Yes. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. Thank you all for that. all right we are now moving into item number four and this is the beginning of our public hearing we are officially opening at five forty three p m central time And city manager, and this is, we are opening the public hearing to set the tentative FY2027 millage rate of 4.25 mils for the purposes of submission on the certificate of taxable value to the property appraiser's office pursuant the TRIM Act. City manager. City manager.

Yes, sir. So there's been several discussions with you all about the millage. As you all remember, last meeting we discussed a 4.35. We got the final numbers in. That reduced down to a 4.25. The rollback is now a 3.87. So staff is prepared for a 4.25 tentative millage approval tonight. If that is the desire of the Commission, I've got a little bit to read to meet all of our guidelines, and if that changes, we'll go from there. This is the City of Windhaven Taxing Authority. The rollback rate is 3.8787. A 4.25 millage rate is a 9.57% increase over the rollback rate, with the millage rate to be levied of 4.25. And with that, Mayor, it is the discussion and desire of the Commission.

OK. Thank you, City Manager. So amongst all five of us, or four and a half of us, because we have Sam by voice but not in person here, Is there anything anybody would like to reopen and discuss? We've had six budget hearings on this now. In budget hearing number five, or budget workshop number five, I think we really came together by and large. Is there anything anyone would like to discuss or any final adjustments to the budget before we move forward? The general fund, that is, budget.

Go ahead. I just know that we've been around the block several times. We're here tonight to set the millage. And if we set the millage at the right number tonight, We're looking at a very, or the number that we have, we're looking at a very, very weak number for a surplus, a number that probably won't survive the year, and we'll be coming back and making an adjustment. So in my mind, in my thoughts, since we got the numbers back from the state in the last, what city manager just said, I have a millage in mind and I can wait to hear from everybody or I can make a motion, but I'd rather hear what everyone else has to say before we throw out a number. But I know that in my mind the number I have is a lot closer to the ceiling than the actual number that the city manager has.

Yes, sir. Thank you for that, sir. Let's do that. And I'll go last. I'll be the caboose, but we'll start from you. We'll go to Commissioner Peebles and Warwick and Ms. Tender, and then I'll circle back. If there's anything y'all specifically want to talk about relooking at or readdressing before we move forward, we can, and we'll go right into the millage rate from there. So Commissioner Peebles, do you have anything you want to share as we get this party started, sir?

Sure. In this current proposal, I know we're just doing the millage right here, not the actual budget itself per se. But in my opinion, I would rather you lower the CRA to like a 50 or 60 before I'd want to see the millage go up any more than a 4.25. That's really where I stand on that. I know that, because if we're going to raise the millage, I want, you know, I've said for the past three years, I'm not a fan of raising the millage, but I think, I mean, I'd rather the millage, if we vote for a 3-2 and we go back to the rollback rate, we're looking at potentially not even having a city. So that's what's really forcing my hand here, which I hate. I hate the situation, not anything that the staff has done, but the situation that we're in. I hate it for everyone involved, for the citizens, for the staff, for everybody. That being said, I would rather cut back a little bit to like 50 or 60% to give us more revenue, or I should say surplus, than raise the millage to go from a 4.8 one up to anything higher than a 4.25. I'm not a huge fan of that, but I'm willing to listen, I guess is what I'm getting at.

Thank you for that. Anything else, sir?

Not at this time. I'll let everyone else talk, and then I guess if I have any more thoughts, I can't raise my hand, but I'll chime in.

Yeah, so since you're online or via phone, just go ahead and just say, hey, Mayor, or, you know, whatever, just excuse me or step up. There's no harm or foul in that whatsoever, sir. But thank you. Commissioner Ward.

So I have a presentation I want to go over, but it's going to take a little bit.

Just how about your initial opinions here first and tell us what you want to say and we'll...

I'm fine with the rest of it. I just want to talk about the animal shelter. But with everything we talked about, the budget workshop, I was fine with.

Okay. Commissioner Tender.

I like Sam's idea. I think we should cut back on CRA. Of course, the last meeting I said we should get rid of it completely, take that $1.3 million and put it in our budget and use it for good use. But I agree, let's keep the millage rate as low as possible.

Yes, ma'am. All right, so anything else, sir?

I definitely think we should keep the animals shelter.

So I'll be the caboose here. I agree with almost everything that's been said up here. I am most concerned about our residents, especially our seniors on fixed incomes, disabled veterans, everybody, but especially those that are most susceptible to increases in taxes. I'm a proud Republican, I'm a proud conservative, have been my whole life, and I will tell you that I do not know of a good tax increase. The way you typically force efficiencies is you give government less money. I will tell you in the seven and a half months that I've been here, though, our city, we were over $20 million in debt. We're now at 18.8. A lot has changed since Hurricane Michael, and we have to get very, very serious to keep this city in a financially solvent position. Now, I will give the city manager a lot of props here, and Ms. Roman, our finance director. They have been through the numbers repeatedly. Positions have been cut. We're going down to what I call a beanie weenies and ramen noodle kind of operational budget. It's barely maintaining. It's an important first step. Didn't necessarily start this budget fire, but the budget fire's here, and Amendment 3 this fall could make things a lot worse. So we have a responsibility to the citizens for the core services that they protect to fund the city adequately to provide those services for safety, protection, make sure the sewers flush, that kind of thing. But at the same time, we need to make sure that we are taxing as limited and as small a number as we can. And that is the knife's edge that we're dancing on. So I agree with Commissioner Peebles and Commissioner Tender. I really would like to, before we vote on this, to revisit the CRA. I'd like to look at a, I know we had talked back and forth on 50 and 75%. I think if we go down to 50%, Kiki, I would actually like for you to pull this up in your spreadsheet. Let's model that. Let's look at a 4.25 with a CRA down to 50%. I would like to know what our bottom line surplus would be for any breaks or emergencies. It's going to be a lean budget, but I want specifically to know what that would look like in terms of surplus for the, what I'll call the mad money responses, right? The breaks, the things where you have to have unprogrammed funds for.

While I work up those numbers for you, Mayor, let me make sure that everyone understands. You are voting on a millage tonight?

Yes.

You will vote on a millage at the next meeting? The rules apply tonight as they did when you voted on the ceiling in July. Whatever you vote on tonight, you cannot raise at the next meeting. You can lower, but you cannot raise it. So effectively, once again, you are voting on the ceiling.

Understood. And I just wanted, you know, guys, bear with me. I'm a college professor in real life, retired military guy. If I explain a little too much, I'm sorry. I would rather you all have a better understanding than not enough. And this is full transparency and openness here and public sausage making and work.

If we reduce the CRA to 50% funding without making additional changes to staffing, The surplus would be $292,000.

292K versus 151.5K as it stands now.

Yes, sir.

So effectively we double, give or take, we effectively double our surplus.

Numerically that's correct.

Okay. I just wanted to run that number to everybody. It's been brought up by three of us now, three of the five. I wanted to make that clear what that would entail. It would basically double our emergency reserve for the budget and the general fund. Okay, so next round discussion thoughts. Not quite sure we're at presentation yet, but any general discussion about the millage rate and any final tweaks?

I'm not for decreasing the CRA more than we're already decreasing it, because once you decrease it, you're never going to get it back, and you're going to leave a lot of money on the table in the future. That's where I'm at.

Yes, sir. My only retort to that, and I fully hear you, Commissioner Ward, is I honestly and openly wonder if the CRA will even exist in anything close to its current form if Amendment 3 passes this November. That's a very real question none of us can answer.

We're combining the millage and the CRA as a bargaining chip. We should just concentrate on setting the millage right now, I think, and then talk about the CRA. Okay. And what Kiki said resonates with me is that we need to set a millage rate now, and at our next meeting, we can lower that millage rate. So I propose, and I'll put this in the form of a motion, that we set our millage rate at a 4.55. We could go down from there and we can adjust things. That would give us a little closer to, I think, somewhere in the $800,000 range of surplus where when you break pipes, when you blow stuff up in a city like we do, we won't be coming back and saying, hey, we've got to make this budget adjustment because things will go awry and a $300,000 surplus is not enough on a budget like this. This is a lean budget and something's going to break.

And with the CRA at 75%, a 4.55 gives you a surplus of $672,904. Say that again, city manager? CRA funded at 75%. A 4.55 gives you $672,904. And Kiki can do the 50% if you're interested.

Again, right now, we need to focus on the millage. Right. I can model stuff as you like, but your vote needs to focus on the millage.

Understood. One other thing I want to share with the public, just for reference, I've actually shared this online. Lynn Haven Neighbors has it as well, but it's the last 10 years of our historical mill rate, our millage rate. In 2015... through 2019, so through Hurricane Michael, we were at 3.900. In 2020, we went to 4.30. In 2021 and 2022, we were at 4.1. Then in 2024 and 2025, we were at 4.05. So our high water mark, just looking at the last decade of millage rates for the city of Lynn Haven, We've gone from a low of 3.9 before Michael, effectively, after Michael hit and we were really dealing with the full-fledged aftermath in 2020, it was 4.3. Then 4.1 for two years after that, so it came down a little, and then 4.05 for the last two years. So just for historic context, that's the millage rate we're talking about. Okay, I just want to throw that out there. I hear you, Commissioner Pernaut, and I appreciate what you're saying, and the pipes breaking is a very, very real thing, and that's, at the end of the day, on this skinny-lean budget, there are some things, to your point, when things break, especially citywide in a key operation, you gotta fix them, whether the money's there or not. We as a city have gotta fix them, and you're trying to make sure there's enough funds and reserve there to actually fix that stuff. And I appreciate that sentiment very much. Any other thoughts or discussion on this amongst the other three commissioners?

Well, if we make a vote in the motion, can we make, is this it, the vote count, the vote throws us to roll back if we don't, we gotta be?

No, sir, if you make a motion and the vote is only 3-2, it does not automatically put you at the rollback rate. There still would have to be a motion. Right. And second.

This motion for this millage is just to set till the next meeting. I know we bounce around CRA and whatnot, but we just gotta take the next step. Now this kind of brings the ceiling down a little bit, but it brings it to a more real level. And what we settle on from here you know could be lower than that so my motion for a 4.55 sets sets us to lower the ceiling but puts us in a situation where that that could that could be the millage so i will make the motion for a 4.55 millage okay

Well, thank you for that. I have a motion from Commissioner Pernaut for a 4.55 millage. Is there a second from the rest of the Commission? Okay. Acknowledged. So let me clarify one thing with you, Commissioner Pernaut. I'm the youngest No, no. Here's my personal thought, and I don't know, because this is my first budget rodeo. You've been here seven years, and I want to make sure I'm not missing something. Would it not be better to go ahead, and if we can, nail down a final mill rate tonight amongst the five of us?

That's what we're doing. I've made my motion. It falls in someone else's court. Let's go. Okay.

What was it before? 4.32 we were looking at? 4.35. All right. I'll make a motion for 4.35. All right.

So, Ms. Kiki, while you're speaking, if you could, at the same time, you... That'll be the ceiling, right?

That's it. Can't go any higher. And the surplus at a 4.35 with a 75% funded CRA is $325,365. And that is the millage that the Finance Review Committee recommended. We get to almost that exact same number

if we do the 4.25 in the CRA at 50%. They're close. Right. Okay. So 4.35 is what we discussed last time, but for not only the commission's clarity, Kiki, but also the public at large. I know that's what we all walked away from, and four of us said we didn't like it, but we could live with that. And then we had one big fat maybe in air quotes. So... You got some additional planning factors in that changed that number from the state.

Yes.

That drove it to 4.25. Can you speak to that briefly?

So 4.25 requires a 4-1 vote. 4.35 requires a unanimous vote.

Right. Based on the new state planning factors.

Correct. Yes.

Now you have all of the new state planning factors that you need?

Everything is in. I have absolutely everything from the state.

Okay. So, Sam, did you hear that?

Yes, sir. Okay.

And the rest of the Commission, y'all are clear on that? A 4.35 will now be a 5-0 vote. Correct. And a 4.25 would be a 4-1 vote. 4-1 vote. Based on our historics, just looking at our current millage rate to our new millage rate, roll back aside for a moment, current mill rate to new mill rate, the 4.05 to a 4.25 is a 4% increase. A 4.35 would be about a 6.5% increase. percentage-wise.

I believe you. I don't have that.

So that's what we're talking about, y'all, with a mill rate that has actually gone down over the last five years. We're talking about a very small margin and room for error here. So I just wanted to share that with everybody. As we're going through that, looking at the historics, that's what we're looking at. It's now a 4.35% or potentially a 4.25%.

Mayor, would Commissioner Ward add a motion? Would you entertain a second for the discussion? Sure.

So now that we have clarification, we have a motion from Commissioner Ward. Do we have a second for 4.35? Okay. Hearing none, the next step would be a 4.25. Which is the next logical?

I'll second 4.35 as a ceiling, as a ceiling. You know, you guys got to understand, this is the highest we're going to go. You can't just, we're not setting the millage tonight. We're setting the ceiling again.

Understood.

Because you keep haggling with the CRA here. We got to do one and then the other.

Sure. The only, yeah, but, and I say this with all due respect, I love you like an uncle. And I mean no disrespect, so I hope you don't take it that way. This is a very big piece. This is the core funding of our city budget. But we also have the utility rates. There's other expenses. So this is a big piece, but it's not the entire piece of what we're going to have our residents pay. So that's why I'm being a little timid here, because I don't want to make that any bigger than we have to. That's all.

We got to put our big boy pants on and do this. Let's go.

So we have a motion and a second for a 4.35. Any discussion amongst the commission before I open this up to the public? Yes, Sam, go ahead.

Thanks. I just want to piggyback on with it being a, this is just to reiterate what Commissioner Perno is saying, just like the trim thing. I agree that this is just the ceiling. So let's treat it as the ceiling in this vote. It'll make life a lot easier for all of us. And for our next official vote at our next meeting, then we can do more of the negotiating in terms of who want to lower it or not. I'd rather, you know, I, I don't really necessarily want a 435, but I also don't want to handcuff us at the same time. And we need a 50 vote to be able to give us a little talking room. I'd rather be able to talk about it and do some math in our own heads with the information we've got tonight. Maybe talk to residents and hear their concerns for the next two weeks, whatever that may be, whatever your strategy is. But go ahead and don't handcuff us tonight. with the focus of our final decision being in two weeks.

Okay. Well, thank you for that. And I'll ask both you, Sam, and Commissioner Pernod, because I'm literally, if we can come together as a commission tonight and walk away with a firm set millage rate, why set a ceiling and re-talk and go down again? If we can nail it down tonight, let's do it. Well, understand, if we all come together now and agree to a millage rate, we formality sign off on it next meeting and we're done, versus set a higher number and then play with it again for two weeks. I'm just trying to understand. This is my first budget rodeo. So y'all please, y'all school me a little bit here.

I just think it's because we haven't, I think in my mind, when I'm from reading the room, I don't think all five of us see eye to eye on the CRA. And if that's the thing that we're worried about, we need to worry about that when we're actually talking about the budget, not the millage. And so based on the budget, then we can do the millage next time. This will give us a little more time to hash out the CRA bit because I don't think we're there yet.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that. Again, seven and a half months in the job and my first budget round with y'all, so thank you for schooling me on that. Commissioner Warrick, Commissioner Tender, y'all got any thoughts on this?

No, I think, I mean, I'd love to have it done tonight, but... I feel 4.55 is way too high. I could even live with 4.35 tonight as long as we can lower it the next time. But everybody's shaking their head that they want to lower it next time, so why don't we just do it now?

And to my point earlier, we have a couple of different pieces of the puzzle before it gets to a bottom line of what our citizens are going to owe. we'll have an opportunity to make a couple of meaningful discussions. So yes. And the rest of us agreed to a 4.35 at our budget workshop last week. So for that, for this, If that's the way I want to do it, you want to take a two-prong process, I can live with that.

I definitely want to hear from the residents.

Yes, ma'am.

I want to hear what they have to say if we go in at a 3.5 as a ceiling, or 4.35 as a ceiling.

Yes, ma'am. So we have a motion and a second. We've all five now been able to discuss it. I want to open up the floor.

Mayor, before you do, I need to read these two things. Okay, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

So it's at a 4.35. City of Lynn Haven Taxing Authority, the rollback rate is a 3.8787. The percentage of increase over the rollback rate is a 12.15. And the millage rate to be levied is 4.35. And then also the resolution number is 2026-09-582, a resolution of the City of Lynnhaven, Florida adopting the tentative levying of ad valorem taxes for Bay County for fiscal year 2026-2027 and providing an effective date. That resolution, paragraph 1, is set at a 4.25 millage. If the 4.35 is passed tonight or whatever is passed, we will modify the resolution paragraph accordingly before it's executed, just so everyone knows that that resolution is what it states.

Okay.

And then, Mayor, I would also ask, you know, the conversation tonight is setting a ceiling and then reevaluating at the next meeting. Is the desire of the Commission to have another budget workshop? What are we evaluating between now and then without selecting an affirmative millage rate is the question. If we just set a ceiling tonight to reevaluate, is there anything that staff needs to prepare for to discuss? to reduce it or what? We would ask that consideration from the Commission.

That's a fair question. I'll open it up to my colleagues here. The CRA has been a discussion item. The animal shelter has been a discussion item. But most of the rest of the budget we seem to be fairly in alignment with. Is that a correct assumption? We have some discussion back and forth on utility rate or garbage rates, and we can even talk about stormwater rate, the non-avalorum, but those are kind of the three financial pieces. Is there anything else that would merit a seventh budget workshop or discussion?

May I?

Yes.

Because this commission has not voted on the sanitation rates or the storm water rates, those are not included in the budget. I have set it at the fiscal 26 numbers.

Say that one more time.

Because you have not voted on a sanitation increase, there's no increase calculated in the budget that you're looking at. Right? The... Stormwater assessment, I did use the STANTEC stormwater assessment.

3%.

The 3% is included in this budget.

So basically anything we vote on tonight for utilities will be adjusted and be presented at the next meeting and voted on.

But keep in mind, too, your sanitation and your stormwater does not affect the millage rate.

Right, yeah, those are enterprise funds, the non-Avalon funds. Can you not hear me, sir? I'm sorry. Are the rest of y'all ladies in the back? Are any of you guys in the back? Please, when y'all can't hear us, and I tend to be the worst at this, I'll lean back from the microphone. If y'all can't hear me, please raise your hand. When I see you, I will gladly adjust. Okay, so... Discussion guidance for the city manager here. Do y'all want a seventh workshop? Do you feel like there's much beyond a couple of the CRA and perhaps an animal shelter presentation to kick around aside from the garbage rates and stormwater rate?

I thought we already were in agreement on the CRA from the last budget workshop. I'm not sure what's changed between now and then.

On the CRA, the last I heard, we were talking 50 percent and now it's at what, 80?

No, 75 is what we left at the last meeting.

And that, at 75 percent, that does not eliminate Ben's salary. He still gets that.

As we discussed in the CRA meeting, the CRA director position is cut 20 percent to accommodate the reduction of the CRA.

Okay.

Thank you. Basically, it's kind of one being in equals one being out over here. That one budgetary change would basically double our access funding in the general fund, the surplus, which isn't a lot. You're basically 151 versus 300K. That's what that would drive, differential. Okay. What is our collective? Commissioner Peebles, I can't see you to express your body language, but you got any thoughts or inputs here, sir?

I don't think we necessarily need another workshop. I think what you said was kind of The main point is there's two sticking points that we don't all five see exactly eye to eye on. So over the next two weeks, we need to formulate our arguments or debates on why you want the CRA at a certain rate, if you do or do not want the animal shelter, and then make your decision based on that. I think it's as simple as that to me.

I will ask, is there any other budget concerns, line items, expenses? that are of a particular concern to the rest of the Commission, any individual Commissioner that y'all want to bring up and have re-looked at over the next two weeks? Hearing none, then do we do a formal workshop, a seventh, where we plow this out outside? Because our time is short. We have to approve this by the end of the month, correct?

The 22nd.

So we have limited runway left to come together as a team on this.

I don't need a workshop. I'm already where I'm at. I'm at 75%.

Okay.

We have a motion and a second. Let's vote. Let's be unanimous. Let's set the ceiling and go.

Okay. So we're going to open up with that. I've got a bunch. I saw you first, Mr. Langford, and we'll just work our way through. Come on up, good evening.

You kind of alluded to it, but as Paul Harvey would say, I'm gonna give you the rest of the story with the document that you held up on the millage rate. That's 33% of the information that's out there. The other was the increase of our water rates the increase of the stormwater assessment, et cetera. So when we sit here and we look at, well, this is what the millage rate was for this year, and this stayed the same, and this is what the millage rate was for this year, and it decreased, et cetera. When we were keeping that millage rate the same, or when it was decreasing, guess what was increasing? The stormwater. Guess what was increasing? The water rates. And that was all part of the discussion. I said, well, we're going up on the water rates and we're going up on stormwater. We've got to keep the millage rate where it's at because we don't want to overtax the people. So when we start talking about the historic millage rate in the city of Lynnhaven, we've got to look at the whole bottle of wax. And while I'm on this whole bottle of wax, this notion that we don't need to look at the budget and we just need to focus on the millage rate, that don't make any sense either. That's like me going out and shopping for a job and somebody saying, well, I'll give you $18 an hour. I'm sure, let's take it. And not understanding how much money I need to make to be able to pay my bills. That's the wrong way to look at this. You have to look at the budget when you're looking at the millage rate. You can't just focus on one and not focus on the other. It all comes together, okay? So, you know, we're going to have to keep in mind, too, all right, if you're going to increase this millage rate, we know it'll afford whatever it was we walked in here, all right? Now we're voting on a ceiling. That's okay if we want to vote on a ceiling, all right? But here's where I'm at with it. We start increasing... The millage past where we were at, and I get it, $192,000, that's not a whole lot of money for the emergencies, okay? When we start increasing that millage, we got to start cutting in other areas, all right? Commission's going to have to meet the city halfway. Here's what we need to balance the budget. If you need to go more than that, then you're going to have to start cutting services, whether it's the animal shelter, whether it's the CRA, whether whatever it is. I mean, we got two baseball seasons. We've got two basketball seasons. Why? I'm not saying it's going to save us a whole lot of money. I'm just saying we've got to start thinking about other things. There's talks about animal shelter. Look, we've been through this budget I don't know how many times, six workshops worth, okay? But if we've got to start creeping this millage rate back up, you're going to have to start cutting down. That's all I'm asking for. Appreciate it.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Shearer. If I may, sir. Yeah. This is a, I'm reading the agenda right. This is 4A with a motion. We haven't talked about 4B yet. Correct. We shouldn't be combining A and B right now. If we're going by the letter of the law, we set the millage, and then we go on to discussion and approval in B. That's what we're supposed to be doing.

Acknowledged. city attorney can you weigh in there no that's correct we need to keep public comment to those issues related to the village okay so my guidance based on the mayor pro tem and the city attorney is for right now we have a two-part public hearing I'm going to have to request that your comments be held to the millage rate. I know it's all basically tied together, but it needs to be millage specific, otherwise we will be here all night.

I can clarify, millage would impact the general fund budget, I believe, if that's part of this, but the stormwater and stuff that's in Form 4B would not be included in the public comment at this time.

Acknowledged. So everybody tracking with that? For the general fund budget and the mill rate, that's the two heads of the same, or two sides of the same coin. But for the other funding, we'll hold that off to 4B. Mr. Beshear.

Okay. You know, you have to know how much money you're going to make before you know what you need to budget for. So that's what y'all are doing right now is setting how much money you're going to have. Then you can worry about the budget. I do want to correct one thing that you said earlier, Mayor Lowry. You said we were $19 million or so in debt. That's the storm debt. We're $28.3 million in debt as a city. Just to correct that number. I did want to bring one thing to remind everybody that Before I go there, Pat, thank you for proposing the higher millage rate. I think that's a good place to go. I know everybody hates taxes and we hate to give the city more money because we're afraid they're going to waste it, but we've got to do something to ensure that the city stays a going concern and that we're able to pay our debts and able to grow and able to fix our vehicles and everything else. This budget's not going to let us do any, or this millage rate at 4.25 or even 4.35 is not going to do that. But I want to remind y'all that the finance committee recommended the 4.35 millage rate with a 50% CRA and no animal shelter. So what y'all are doing now, you're talking about 75% this or whatever. you're well above what the finance committee recommended. I just want to bring that back to everybody's mind that y'all aren't, even if you set the millage rate at 4.55, you're still even not going as far as the finance committee said you needed to go pretty much is what I think. So I want the public to understand that y'all are making adjustments and are listening to the public and not just going about this on your own. But I did want to say that, that the finance committee recommended 4.35 CRA at 50% and no animal shelter. And that would give you some, I don't like to use the word surplus, as soon as you say surplus people start spending it, some unassigned funds. I think that's, and based on the history of the commission in the last year or two, and the money that they approved to be spent after the budget's approved, I don't think, if you'd go 4.25 and you leave the CRA at 75% and you leave the animal shelter in place, you're gonna be coming back and spending out of that existing reserve funds that we have right now that are already getting very minimal. I think it was 18 million two or three years ago and now it's at 12 million. that's just going to keep marching down if we don't get the budget up there and millage rate where it needs to be. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beshear. Sir, would you like to remain seated? We can bring you a microphone if you need to. Come on up, sir.

I am not able to hear to tell what point we are at the point talking about stormwater.

No, sir. We're on millage rate.

Okay. Let me... Just make a point now concerning stormwater. Well, we'll get to that.

That's in Part B, sir. Right now, it's just the millage rate.

I understand what you're saying, but just let me say this. Sir, you're not— I object when you get to the stormwater. Okay. I object to having a hearing tonight because we got a notice on our tax. It was going to be two weeks ago, and at that time, there was no ordinance— existed and so if you come up to discuss this i believe it has to be advertised and notified so i i believe i just want to uh ahead of time at stormwater object to having any kind of hearing on it tonight because it's not notified sir this is on the millage thank you please keep your comments to 4a and not to 4b please thank you all right so anybody for 4a specifics i've got

Second row here on my right, and then Zach and Ryan. Y'all come on up. Good evening.

My name is Jack Prescott. I've lived here 52 years. I was the general manager at the paper mill from 1988 to 2005. I want to tell you a story about the paper mill. This has to do with spending. When I came here, we were using 31 million gallons of water a day. out of Deer Point Lake. When I left, we were using 19 million gallons a day. It cost $400 a minute to run that paper mill. Picture that, $400 a minute. It's over a $200 million a year impact on Bay County. When I left, when I came here, we were making 1,450 tons a day. When I left, we were making 1,950 tons a day. When I came here, we had 850 employees. When I left, we had less than 600. How did we do that? There were no sacred cows. We just looked at every element in the operation and figured out a better way to do it. There were no sacred cows. If you give every department head a target to cut 10% out of their expenses, I bet you they can do it. Just like that. We're talking about limiting spending. Let's talk about limiting spending that's happening. I talked to Chris about this one time before. There were five US SUVs out there in that parking lot. I bet you every one of them cost $70,000. I believe you could have gotten out with a vehicle worth about $40,000 for it, this kind of thing. but you have no sacred cows, you create committees that says this is your target to decrease your spending, and you do it, then you don't have to worry about the millage rate. I'll bet you if you do that, we'll find a better solution than this. I came here because I don't want to see the animal shelter shut down. I know this is a target, but I talked to Courtney out there a while ago. She said she's been flooded with food. after those notices. I put a notice on the Lynn Haven neighbors about them needing that. I got 570 views on that thing. So I don't think we can just go ahead and carte blanche do it. I believe there's a better way than increasing the spending, is what I'm saying. And there is a way around it. There are people that can come in here and do this for you. They may do it on a contingency. They detect it. But sometimes the people that are there can't see past where they've been, and they try to protect things that should not be protected. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Prescott.

All right. Mr. Detweiler, Mr. Scray, and then I saw Mr. Hines' hand, and then Ms. Parker, then Mr. Schweitzer.

All right, let's get down to some brass tacks. I'm gonna reserve all my comments for the budget for 4B, because that's where it's supposed to go. So let's talk about the millage rate specifically. Ms. Roman, can I ask you a question? Currently in the general fund, about how much money do we have? 12 million, 11 million, about where are we at?

Is your question about what is commonly referred to as reserves? Yes. Which technically is unassigned fund balance. My estimate is that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million at September 30th.

Okay. So in order for us to maintain eligibility for things like state emergency grants or F rock or a whole number of other things, we have to maintain six months worth of a budget. Now, all things considered that's about 10.5, 10.8, depending on how you shave it. Right. Um, so you're talking a mill one, a mill two that we have in reserves for anything to go wrong. Commissioner Perno hit it on the head. That ain't enough. You get one pipe that bursts in here. Insurance doesn't cover. You get, you know, some of the storm water drains that we have that are old. We get flooding somewhere. You get a storm and you need some money. Believe me when I say it goes like that. And every single citizen in here is going to tell you when you've got a small savings account and you get a puncture in your tire or your brakes go out, you got a medical bill you can't pay. how many more bonds can we really afford to take out in this city you guys got one more budget meeting to set the the ceiling or to actually set the military setting a higher ceiling isn't going to do you any harm not now not ever you haven't set a budget yet you don't know what your spending is going to be and there's clearly plenty of talk about the cra about the animal shelter about other stuff like that you've got a variance of 500 to 800 000 in your budget And you guys are talking about dropping your ceiling to what you want to spend on it yet, but you don't even know what you're spending. Set a higher ceiling. Do yourselves a favor. Don't chop your knees out before you get to the point where you actually know what money you're going to have coming out of your bank account. Give yourselves an actual cushion. I wouldn't operate a business without a cushion. I can tell you right now. And I can tell you Chris ain't got much hair left to lose if you guys cut any more money out of his budget. Be smart.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Scray. Good evening. Thank you.

All right, so 4.35 mills is not an easy budget. It's a compromise, something that isn't happening a whole lot on this commission anymore. A millage that will barely provide for a very lean 2027, a year to learn what the community really values and what the city can truly handle. taxpayers are sacrificing and the city sure sacrificed with them lost jobs not hiring the correct head count on the verge of one big emergency taking tanking our budget None of you have to love every part of this. You just have to recognize when compromise has finally reached far enough. It takes all five of you now to keep the city running. Show Lynn Haven that when the decisions were hard, five commissioners were actually capable of coming together to keep the city going for at least one more year. The hardest work can be done yet, and don't let these two millage votes undo it. Thank you, sir.

All right, next. And Mr. Hines, Ms. Parker, and Mr. Schweitzer. And then we'll have Ms. Day. Good evening, Mr. Hines.

Good evening, sir.

Good evening, group.

I didn't come to talk about a lot of things, but as commissioners, you're supposed to love your city. If you love your city, you should want to live in your city and not live off the taxpayers' money. You know who I'm talking to. Now, as far as the leadership you have in the city, you have several people making over $100,000 a year. If they take a 5% cut, they wouldn't have to cut their staff. We're doing all the work. That's my opinion. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. All right, Ms. Parker, then Mr. Schweitzer. And Ms. Day, when we get to you, ma'am, we'll bring a microphone to you, okay?

Good evening, Ms. Parker.

Good evening.

I am in favor of the 4.3 millage rate. If we continually have the amount of money for the taxpayers We're going to be taxed for that. All the taxpayers are going to be taxed for that. So if you keep on increasing, guess what's going to happen? People are going to get pissed. People are going to leave Lynn Haven. So I'm suggesting the 4.3 instead of the 4.55. That's what I'm suggesting. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you. Mr. Schweitzer.

Yes, ma'am. Come on up. Mr. Schweitzer has yielded. Good evening, ma'am.

I know we're in a tight squeeze.

I know we're in a tight squeeze. Now, you know, again, y'all all have to be held accountable. Should have been held accountable with the last people that were here. Because somebody failed to stand up and do anything. As far as a citizen of the community, we are taxed out. I don't mind, but we've got to cut the fluff, CRA or whatever, and then we have to tackle one problem at a time. We cannot continue. I've got a $200 water bill from $66 to $200 to tell you how severe it is. So when you're asking people to continue to go up and pay more and more and more without looking and cutting, and some of these people may be blinded, like the gentleman said, they can't see the forest for the trees. I do believe in keeping the animal shelter. We have a lot of people in the community that have done a lot of hard work, a lot of smart people, and y'all need to listen to them, but you also need to look in. We need to look at creating revenue, like renting out all those offices over there, doing something with the upstairs, with that marvelous kitchen that we overspent on. We need to somehow recoup some of this money that was spent by the previous administration. That's all I'm going to say.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Schweitzer. Hey, Mayor. Yes, sir.

I was just going to ask that... if Chris would potentially ask her for her address maybe after the meeting, because if her water bill went from 60 to 200, we have not raised rates, so it's a possibility that there could be a leak. So we need to look at that and make sure that that's not happening.

Ma'am, did you hear Commissioner Peebles? You have my contact information, do you not? Do you have my contact information? We'll need to give it to you. And Mr. Lightfoot, we'll address that. If you don't mind, ma'am, come back up here, please, just a second. And then you'll be up, Mr. Schweitzer.

Give me a call.

All right, sir, good evening.

Hey, guys. I'm not here to bail the city out. We're not here to bail the city out. We are, Lynn Haven is hardworking, many pensioners, many one or, you know, I have a one income family. The salaries are low. Now people are saying, hey, maybe I'm gonna get a little bit more money with this homestead exemption, and you guys are raising it. It's not gonna balance out. You see, I have a term. I call it big government liberal Republicans. That's what this is. This is government of the government. You're fending for the government. You're not fending for the people. You're supposed to be fending for the people, not this city. I have a lot to say about what should be cut. It's a lot. It's a lot that isn't cut, but you can't raise the millage rate. It's up to you to figure out how to do that without raising the millage rate. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Now, I believe we have Ms. Day. Am I missing anybody else? Okay, Ms. Beshear after Ms. Day.

Ms. Grand Prix has her mic.

She's got one. Thank you.

Thank you, Gina. All right, Ms. Day, the floor is yours, ma'am.

Yes.

Okay, I'm going to go back to 23. Now, ma'am, right now we're just on the millage rate. Well, this is why we're going to have a high millage rate. Okay. If you will think about the CRA, I think my personal feeling, get rid of it. Ever since 2020...

Yes, ma'am.

It's been going up. The CRA is not treating the citizens fair. They take our monies and move forward and do bring in new plans. So we're not receiving anything. So if you can go back and do this homework from the year 2020 and check and see about when Mr. Lightfoot arrived and Mrs., Kiki, she arrived. I think we're going to go back and we're going to find where all of this discrepancy is going on. And Ben Janke is out there. He's increasing it, increasing all this annexation, and it's causing all this to happen to the people. And I keep saying it until you get your books out and start reading it and seeing what's going on. You'll never figure it out. We'll keep going up, up, up. because all of this, when you increase it, wait and see what happens.

Thank you, ma'am. I'm finished. Thank you, Gina. Anyone else? Ms. Beshear. Good evening.

This, I believe this that I have in my hand is from the very first budget workshop meeting or the second one, but I want to remind you that there's a hiring moratorium already for this budget. There's no COLA. There's reduced training and traveling. They reduced the paid holidays from 13 to 11. Eliminate PTO buybacks. leave accrual, eliminate retirement bonus, eliminate longevity bonuses, and no events at all. Leave the ceiling and get into the budget in the next two weeks. Thank you.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Anyone else for 4A? Hearing none, city manager, we have a motion and a second to set the ceiling at 4.35.

Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Pernod? Yes. Commissioner Peebles?

Yes.

Commissioner Tender? Yes. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. 5-0 on that. Thank you. Teamwork. All right. We are now officially public hearing closing at 641 for part 4A. We will now open up public hearing at 641 for part 4B. Discussion and possible approval of the tentative general fund and enterprise funds budget of $54,351,471 for FY2027. Resolution number 2026-09-583, a resolution of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida adopting the tentative budget for fiscal year 2026-2027 and providing an effective date.

Mayor, I would like to reiterate this is a budget that has the CRA funded at 75%. As Ms. Roman said earlier, it does not include the sanitation rates, if approved tonight, or the stormwater assessment, if changed tonight. And to reiterate, as Ms. Beshear has just said, there are no events in this. There are budget or personnel cuts in this budget. I've seen a lot of misinformation about the 21 positions that we cut. Those do affect the budget. I've seen that it's said that that does not affect the budget because they were vacant. If there are 21 funded positions in the budget, it increases the budget, first of all, but second, it gives staff the authority to fill those positions. If those positions are filled, it then affects the cash balance of the city. So looking at our budget, it's two different ways to look at it. We have the budget that you all approve and set for staff, and then you have the cash position of the city. So anything that we remove from the budget, whether it's vacant positions, events, capital projects, capital purchases, that reduces our budget, which in turn will increase our cash position of the city. So I just want to make sure that everyone understands the 21 positions that were cut that were vacant, as well as some of the other positions that are being cut this year.

Thank you, City Manager. Yeah, that makes sense. You can't fill positions that aren't funded that you don't have. You've got to have a seat to put a proverbial butt in it. All right, so we're on now 4B, our general fund and enterprise funds. Is there any discussion amongst the commission? Anything y'all wanna talk about? We now have our new ceiling. We now have our new ceiling of 4.35. So now we can talk about, Go ahead and open it up. Anyone else? Ms. Tender and then Mr. Ward.

I recently received some information concerning the DEP and Kiki's been helping me all day today get these answers. And it turns out that in 25 we signed a contract with DEP that any fines or penalties we received we would take out in trade. We wouldn't have to pay them in cash, but we would have to have the work done, prove that it was completed, and pay the vendor. Now Kiki's working on a figure for me because I'm curious to know how much we've paid those vendors since 2025, and as well as I want to know how much of our own people, how many of our own employees are doing any of that work. Or are we hiring it all out? So that's something that the last few days, I had 90 pages of documentation on how this works. And I was never aware of it. We had decided, it was $620,000 or something that we owed DEP in fines and penalties in 2000.

No, ma'am, if I may, are you talking about a consent order? Are you talking about a consent order?

San order?

Consent order, is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, the one that was signed in 2020.

Yeah, it's a consent order. It's from when it's... Saying that we would take it out and create. Right, we would have to perform that. in lieu of a fine for releasing raw sewage into the bay.

Right. Exactly. That's what I said. And we're trading it out and we're paying a vendor, obviously, and do we have any of our own employees doing any of that work?

No, ma'am.

Are we paying all one vendor?

It was done through a project, right? So you all approved the change order for that vendor at the last Commission meeting.

So are we all paying one vendor to do all that work? Yes, ma'am. Is that the company in Alabama?

They are in Alabama. Yes, ma'am. Jim House and Associates.

I don't have anything else to say about it. I've just been asking a lot of questions and I think it's... Was that not a project that we had to take off?

The DEP fine was $169,771. So we could have stroked a check to DEP for $169,771 for nothing or just gave them the money. Or you can do an in-kind project where you must spend 1.5 times higher than the fine. So we presented to the commission and got it authorized through DEP to put SCADA on our lift stations because we've never had SCADA before. We're the only municipality, probably in the state of Florida, without SCADA. The commission approved that project with Jim House and Associates. It was original 600 something thousand dollars. They got all of the SCADA installed. We had panels that were outdated and obsolete and damaged. That was the change order you all approved at the last Commission meeting, so it's just over $800-something thousand dollars now. It's paid for out of the sewer department, and it's an in-kind project. As part of the consent order, I will send it to you in that public records request. If we have other spills at the sewer plant or other exceedances with our nutrient removal, fines will continue to incur and we will have to do other in-kind projects or give DEP money. We don't have. Well, we have money in the sewer department, yes, ma'am, but we would not just pay a fine if we could do an in-kind project that would benefit the city. So likely we will purchase more bypass pumps if needed, generators if needed, and any upgrades to our sewer plant and lift stations.

Just to go a little further, if I may, You know, this is something that we voted on, you know, in lieu, the project was in lieu of the actual fine. And yes, it was more, but it hardens our system to the point that it brings us up to date in functioning. And also, just to mention that, you know, the infiltration of our sewer system, happens with a frequency of our of our inches of rain, when we can't take, when we get to flash flood status and we can't take anymore ground, you know, our ground can't take anymore, our runoff starts to go into our sewer system. And when that mixes or when that gets released, that's a big deal. And, you know, we give our numbers just like it happens in Panama City as well. And then you've got to face the consequences with DEP. City Manager, you mentioned earlier about procurement of the land that we were looking at, that we've been working on through Nature Conservancy, did the appraisal, and we're going forward to try to make this happen. That would alleviate the lowest point of our sewer system in the city over there. It's over around 12th Street in Virginia, and that's where the low point is, the lowest point. And you can imagine, if you've driven that way, it doesn't take much rain at all for the sewer to be underwater. uh so we've got work to do uh ongoing to keep this uh no one's pristine about this kind of stuff also having us a water treatment plant on the water's edge is not a good idea this day and age right so we're making we're making steps but that you know consent orders they they happen and that stuff gets dealt with i mean it's a project that we the commission agreed on so Yes, sir. I don't know what, we're not uncovering anything there. We're just restating what we've done, I guess.

One point of clarification, though, City Manager, on the example that Commissioner Tender brought up, if we were to have a fine, let's say, you said $169,000?

That was what the original fine was.

So if the city was going to pay the $169,000 fine versus the mitigation, would that come out of enterprise funds or general funds?

Enterprise fund. The sewer department has to pay for that.

Okay, copy. I just want to verify, because literally right now, if we did the 4.25 budget, we literally have a flex of 151.1K. That one incident would wipe out our entire budget.

Right, so I wanted to reiterate, too, there was an analogy of a pipe breaking, you know, and so for emergencies, if it's water, sewer, stormwater, sanitation, those emergencies are not funded through the general fund, so it would not have any effect on the millage or the general fund budget. Copy. I just wasn't sure if fines— No, sir, not through DEP fines. Four inches of rain for three hours, which we had a couple of weeks ago, that could do it easily. Yes. To confirm the numbers, DEP approved the in-kind project March 25 of 2025. The in-kind minimum that we had to spend was $254,656.50. and the city elected to do the SCADA and install that and the initial project total was $667,510 to complete the SCADA.

So actually a pretty good example of just money, but it comes out of a different pot of money than what we're talking about here. But the cost, the impact, one incident, boom, there's $169,000 fine or a 200, what'd you say, city manager, $34,000? $254,656. Yeah, so either way, significant. All right, Commissioner Ward, the floor is yours, sir.

All right, Harold, can you bring up my slides, please?

So we'll talk about a popular subject right now, animal shelter. All right, so tonight I want to step back from the narrow question of whether Lynn Haven's Animal Shelter should remain open or closed. This is not about caring less for animals, it's about making sure the care we provide can be sustained over time. The better question is, what service model will protect our residents and animals, provide the same level of service or better, and use taxpayer dollars responsibly? I reviewed all 411 incorporated municipalities in Florida to understand the available options and partnerships. Next slide, please. Protecting animals is the standard. The question is how to provide the same level of service or better in a way Lynn Haven can sustain. This decision has three parts. First is service. What level of enforcement, intake, housing, adoption, and emergency response do our residents and animals need? Second is funding. Is the current city only model sustainable or can partnerships stretch our resources further? Third is continuity. No operational change should occur until a qualified provider, a written agreement, any required city code amendments and a practical transition plan are in place. Evaluating alternatives does not mean abandoning animal care or shutting anything down today. Next slide, please. The review covered all 411 municipalities and these three categories account for the entire total. On the left, you can see 397 municipalities, which makes up 96.6%, had no municipal physical animal housing facility identified. That does not mean they provide no animal control. It means the research did not establish a city-operated brick-and-mortar facility. In the middle, eight municipalities. 1.9% of the total operate full municipal shelters that house animals and provide adoption or a comparable disposition service. On the right, six municipalities, 1.5% operate limited holding facilities or kennels for short-term housing before transfer. Put simply, full city-operated shelters are rare in Florida. Next slide, please. This chart shows the same information visually and in the same order. Actually, a slide prior to that. The dominant model is not a municipal shelter building. Most municipalities rely on county government, contracts, nonprofit partners, transfers, or some combination of those approaches. We should also be precise about the limits of the research. The 397 figures are evidence-based findings from city websites, budgets, contracts, and other public records. It is not a legal certification that an unindexed facility could not exist. The statewide review shows that most Florida municipalities fulfill their animal control needs without independently operating a full municipal shelter. That does not determine what Lynn Haven should do, but it demonstrates that other service structures are available for consideration. Next slide, please. The name on a shelter does not always tell us who pays for it. I debated removing Jacksonville from this comparison. Although its shelter is operated and maintained by the City of Jacksonville, Jacksonville and Duval is what's called a consolidated government, so basically your city commissioners are your county commissioners. It's one of the biggest cities in the United States. And the shelter is supported through a countywide governmental tax base, so it's all paid by county money. It is useful for understanding the classification of funding structure, but is not a direct comparison to Lynnhaven. Tallahassee owns and operates its regional shelter, but Leon County contributes 45% of operating costs and participates in capital funding. Crestview remains the operator of its shelter, but its executed agreement with Okaloosa County provides county funding for 50% of actual operating costs and 65% of renovation costs. Live Oak is a separate city-funded example, but its shelter is currently closed after tree damage in December 2025 and its reopening status has not been confirmed. These distinctions matter when we compare Lynn Haven with other cities. Next slide, please. Crestview is the closest practical comparison for Lynn Haven. Under its interlocal agreement, Crestview keeps operational control and uses the shelter to serve both the city and unincorporated northern Okaloosa County. The county pays half of the actual system-wide service costs, including veterinary and legal expenses. For renovation, the county paid 65% while the city paid 35% and contributes to building and land. The agreement also contains billing requirements, regular coordination, termination notice, and protection for capital contributions. The lesson is not that we must copy Crestview word for word. The lesson is that a city operated shelter can become a jointly funded regional asset. Next slide, please. For this comparison, I define Lynn Haven's population pair group as municipalities with adjusted 2025 populations from 10,867 to 32,599, roughly half to one and a half times Lynn Haven's population. 75 Florida municipalities fall within that range, and only two operate full municipal shelters. lynnhaven and crestview jacksonville beach and niceville have limited holding facilities not full shelters equivalent to lynnhaven's operation crestview also now has direct county participation in both operating and capital costs that makes lynnhaven's current position even more unusual next slide please there are at least four paths worth evaluating first continue full city operation but identify a sustainable funding and performance plan Second, explore a formal partnership with the Humane Society or another qualified nonprofit animal welfare organization. Third, continue discussion with Bay County and pursue a broader regional agreement as the county improves its own animal services operation. Fourth, consider a hybrid model. For example, keep in local enforcement while using a qualified partner for sheltering, adoption, or other services. Every option must be judged by the same standard. Equal or better animal care, sufficient capacity, clear accountability, reasonable cost, and uninterrupted service. I am not advocating a predetermined outcome. This is where animal services connect directly to the budget. The $150,000 amount used for county services is only a planned projection based on the average paid by other municipalities in Bay County for these services. Again, it's only projected. It is not a negotiated quote from Bay County. Under this projected model, the city operated shelter expenditures and staffing costs would be removed and $150,000 would be budgeted for county animal services. This would produce the same projected $151,596 general fund surplus at a 4.14 millage rate that the city operated shelter model produces at 4.25. That makes 4.14 and 4.25 the fairest apples to apples comparison. The projected surplus is the same, but the required millage differs by 0.11 mills. Based on the average taxable value of a homestead residential property in Lynnhaven, the difference between the 4.14 and 4.25 millage rates would be approximately $19.33 per year for the average homeowner. That may not sound like a large amount standing alone, but residents do not experience this decision alone. It adds to every other tax, assessment, utility rate, and fee increase they are being asked to absorb. Our responsibility is to examine each increase and avoid adding costs when a sustainable alternative may provide the same level of service or better. The point is not that we must choose the county model. The point is that alternative service models could reduce the cumulative burden on our residents and deserve serious evaluation. Next slide, please. Before discussing the next step, I want to remind everyone that this is not a new direction. On June 23rd, this commission voted unanimously to adopt a resolution directing the city manager to evaluate service consolidation opportunities, develop associated cost of proposals, and report the findings before adoption of the fiscal year 2027 budget. Animal control consolidation with Bay County was specifically identified during our discussions, along with potential arrangements involving other municipalities and private providers. However, the resolution was not limited to animal control. It applied to any potential consolidation of services currently funded through the general fund. We did not vote to consolidate the animal shelter or any other city service. We unanimously voted to obtain the necessary facts, cost, service impacts, and options before making an informed decision. We do not yet know what the outcome will be or which option will ultimately be best for the city. That is precisely why the evaluation must be completed before anyone reaches a final conclusion. Let's follow through on what we unanimously agreed to. complete the evaluation, obtain the facts and costs, and then decide what is best for the city. Next slide, please. My recommended sequence is straightforward. First, protect continuity by keeping the existing service operating until an equal or better alternative is secured. Second, improve our communication with Bay County at the elected official level. while recognizing that management level communication is already occurring. Third, direct management to compare county, humane society, nonprofit, regional, and hybrid models and return with written information on cost, capacity, accountability, animal welfare outcomes, and transition requirements. For whatever reason, the direction we approved did not continue. Before the evaluation was completed and before we received the facts, costs, and service information required by the resolution, some members of the Commission publicly indicated on social media that they no longer supported pursuing this option. Everyone has the right to reconsider a position, but an individual social media statement does not formally change direction unanimously approved by the Commission. If our direction is going to change, that discussion or decision should come back before the Commission publicly on the dais. We need to do better. When we agree on something and give direction publicly, we should say what we mean and mean what we say. At a minimum, we should allow the work we unanimously request to be completed before reaching a final conclusion. I am not prepared to approve the current budget until this commission agrees to complete this evaluation and seriously consider sustainable alternatives. I am not conditioning my vote on Bay County or any partner except in an agreement. I am asking us to follow through on what we already voted to do. Next slide. Bay County's July 29th response declined further pursuit of a merger at the time while the county works to improve its own animal services operation. The letter also expressed a desire to continue a cooperative relationship. I believe the constructive approach is to say that we can do a better job communicating and exploring where future cooperation may be possible. Caring about animals also means making sure the service they depend on are sustainable. That is exactly why I do not want us to wait until financial pressure forces a rushed decision. What we are doing today is difficult to sustain. Responsible animal welfare means planning now for a model that can preserve or improve service over the long term, whether that involves Bay County, the Humane Society, another nonprofit, continued city operation, or a hybrid. I am asking the Commission to protect the current service while we seriously evaluate those options and improve our communications with potential partners.

Mayor? I would like to say that yesterday I spoke with the chairperson of the Humane Society in Port St. Joe. And I'm supposed to be talking with her again tomorrow. And it does, the Humane Society seems to offer a lot as far as support. Folks can donate. They are a 501-whatever. Yep, and it seems to be, they seem to be very supportive. There's only one Humane Society in Port St. Joan, one in Pensacola or Crestview, wherever it is. The other thing is I had a resident come to me and she offered our animal shelter $1,000. And they said, well, we can't take it because we have to turn it over. And where does that money go? If somebody just offers $1,000 to the animal shelter. There's a designation.

There's a designated account in the general ledger for donations to the animal shelter. I can track that whenever you want.

And that money only goes to the animal shelter?

Yes, ma'am, absolutely.

Super. Well, I can answer her question now, because I didn't know where it went. But I'd like for us definitely to explore the Humane Society.

So long-term, I have spoken to two of our Bay County commissioners fairly extensively. The Bay County Animal Shelter is currently going through their own internal operations. Sorry. The Bay County Animal Shelter is going through their own extensive retooling. They're working with local rescues to re-fix theirs, particularly on the cat side of the house. But as the city manager, or excuse me, the county manager's letter directly stated, they're not in a position now to merge with us. Long term, if there is a way to take care of our animals and continue the amazing work that our animal shelter here in Lynn Haven does, which has been part of our community for decades, multiple decades, We will look at how we can combine forces to do good because at the end of the day, it's the best value for the citizens as well as what's best for the animals. But today, we don't have that option. The county has clearly said we're cleaning our own house, we're getting our own house in order. So that is not even an option. We have amazing rescues in the area. I've spent three hours this week alone with the animal shelter and multiple volunteers watching them work, working with them, actually presented them all challenge coins. They were amazing. But neither here nor there. We do amazing work with our animal shelter. There is not an option at this time for this budget to realistically do anything other than to continue operations or unfund it. And Commissioner Tender and I have made it very clear, you don't have our votes if you unfund it. And you can't get hardly anywhere with a 3-2 vote here. I don't know what else you mean by that, Commissioner Work, in that slide where you said you won't support the budget. What exactly are you expecting us to do?

I want us to go with what we agreed to do, because what happened is after that thing was agreed on, people went on social media and said certain things. That went back up to the county.

And so they can spend it.

Okay. They're not happy. We need to reestablish that relationship.

You're clearly not happy. I get that. I'm not happy.

They're not happy either.

But we're talking about our budget tonight.

I get that.

And funding the animal shelter. They've already said their house is not in order. They're fixing their own processes, and they will re-engage at a later time. So what is it that you exactly want us to do here?

Originally, when we approved the resolution, we were open to all ideas. When we originally talked about the budget, we sat here, and I think it was you that said, all options are on the table. But once it came out about the animal shelter and we started getting pushback, people were saying, oh, we're not for it, not going to support it. And it's like, well, let's wait for the facts and data to come back before we make a decision and start making social media posts about it. That's the issue that we have.

For clarification, my social media post, if you're referring to me, came out after that letter came out. I literally posted that letter. That was my first social media post. where the county manager said, we are not looking to merge with you at this time. So I don't know what else you're referring to. There was a lot. We had protests out here. They had one of the top 10 highest kill shelters in the entire state.

That's the problem right there. Like you just said right there, that's the problem.

That was all over the headlines. That was what people were protesting about. That was your pushback. If that's what you're talking about, that's what you're talking about. Neither here nor there now. So what is it, just for clarification, what is it you want to do with this budget?

I want us to go, I'm fine with the budget now. I just want to make sure that we're all in agreement that when we look at this, we look at all the options and we wait for the city to do their job and get all the data and facts before we make a decisive decision.

Now, your second or third to last slide, and Harold, you can bring it back up, Commissioner Warrick's slide deck. It's either the second or the third last slide, in blue at the bottom. You said, I will not vote for this budget until something is addressed. So let's pull that back up.

I just want to make sure that we are all in full agreement of looking at all the options for the animal shelter, all options.

What would we do with that building if we got rid of the animal shelter? Because I've heard a little gossip about that. What would we even do with that building? I don't know.

I mean, it depends on who we partnered with. If they wanted to utilize the building, that would be part of it. If no one wanted to utilize the building, we would likely demo the building and take it off our Schedule of Values.

Okay. Would we sell the property?

No, ma'am. That's at the sports complex.

Okay. So we have three people and a whole squad of volunteers doing amazing work. They are. Every day, day in, day out. Like I said, I've been there three hours this week and paid $130 out of my own pocket donating kitten kibble food for them because that's what they needed. Twenty-four of their 30 cats are kittens right now. I literally spent time with the workers, the volunteers, they're doing amazing work. We don't have an effective consolidation option at this time. Long-term, whatever takes care of those three amazing, the functions that those three amazing city employees do as the animal shelter service folks and the volunteers do for our community, for those animals, the animal control response, we can look at long-term hybrids animal shelter, humane society, everything, even the county. We want what's best for the animals. We want what's best for our community. Right now, those options don't exist. So I'm asking, you're not prepared to approve the current budget unless we do or say what exactly.

that we agree to look at all options for the animal shelter. And you're right. They do great work out there. I'm not advocating to just go and shut down the animal shelter. I was never an advocate to just shut it down with no alternative. But it just seems like people are going out saying certain things and like, oh, yeah, we're not going to approve that. It's like, well, wait. Just wait until we get all the information before we say anything.

OK. So we are on 4B. We've had a whole doctoral-level dissertation by Commissioner Warwick now, which informed us very good information that we are unique.

Don't be a smart aleck, okay? No, I'll use a dictatorial doctoratation, whatever, but.

Doctoral dissertation. That's a formal doctoral level presentation.

All I want tonight is all of us to agree that we are okay with the city looking at all options for this next, after we approve this budget, next fiscal year. That's all I'm asking.

I agree.

So, we.

Sam, where you at, buddy?

I'm right here. What's your thoughts? I guess my opinion is I'm always open to looking at options, but I also agree with the mayor that we're at a point where we do need to approve this budget. I'm not, we don't, I would say if we're talking about we're going to improve this budget and then in the future we look at the Humane Society partnering with whatever after this budget, sure, why not? Let's be a team. Let's get all the data. But as far as today, we need to make a decision on, I mean, if the animal shelter is the sticking point, let's just leave the animal shelter. The county, I've talked to county people too. Right now they do not want us to close our animal shelter. At this moment in time, so it's kind of a moot point for this moment in time So let's move on with it as the mayor said about the letter But I also see that what Commissioner work is saying that yes We need to look at options whatever those may be as now though. Let's I

I just think the underlying question is, do you agree to continue with the resolution that we all adopted at 5-0 in the wording it was done? That's basically what Commissioner Warrick just did through his presentation and what he just said. And he just asked each one of us if we would agree to continue through that resolution. yes and i and i agree um so i was just asking if you agree to the resolution that we all voted to do because there was a reason why you came back and said well things have changed after we've resolution you brought it back and something changed

Yes, sir. So there is no moving forward with that resolution now because I have no one to talk to at the staff level. There is no conversations to be had with the county or another municipality right now. If you all want to continue with the resolution, you five need to talk to the five county commissioners.

Correct.

So, yeah, I mean, I'll agree to talk to the county commissioners. I got no problem doing that.

Commissioner Tender, you got any thoughts?

I got lots of thoughts, but I'm... You're good on this one?

Yep. All right, well, so with 4B, we have that and we also have, this is, it looks like the only two sticking points we had was the animal shelter, which there is no viable alternative to consider at this point. So it really is moot. And I will say for future record, There are a lot of things I want to re-look at moving forward. Once we get past this budget, realizing regardless of whether Amendment 3 passes or not, we have a massive debt that we have to pay off. We're going to be paying off for the next six, seven years. We cannot continue with a starvation diet long-term. We recognize that as well. So there's a lot of things that are gonna have to change. There are going to be very limited tools or quivers in our bow and arrow set, if you will, to be able to address those things. So we are going to have to come together as a commission and as a city to figure out a heck of a lot of different budgetary issues. There are a lot of things that I wanna re-look at. Stormwater is a big one. You know, you did a presentation, Commissioner Wark, and you had different options that I thought was really, really well done shortly before I joined the commission. I want to go back and revisit some of those. There are a lot of different things that we seriously owe it to the public and to the people to make it as efficient and as least expensive as we can, but get the most bang for the buck. So to your point, there are a lot of things we need to look at doing better and more efficiently. And I think some of our folks that spoke tonight talked about that as well. Yes, we're making these hard cuts with a lean budget. But as we go forward, we have to increase our efficiencies. You work smarter, not harder. Now, we're making these cuts, so there's going to lose some responsiveness. How do we mitigate that? And how do we operate more efficiently after that? So to your point, I do believe the point you made was lots of things, pretty much everything needs to be on the table long-term moving forward. And that's a fair assessment, that's a fair point. Rolling back though, hurting us or refocusing us back to 4B for this budget, we had two sticking points. We had the CRA and we had the animal shelter. We've discussed the animal shelter. There is no merger option at this point. There is no consolidation option at this point. Commissioner Tender and I have made it clear where we stand on if it's not funded, we don't have our votes on this budget. The other point that we've gone round and round on is the CRA. We've discussed 75, 60, and 50. Commissioner Peebles brought it up tonight. Commissioner Tender brought it up, and I brought it up in our opening discussions. If y'all want to effectively drop that to 50%, we double our emergency surplus in the general fund budget. From one emergency to basically two or three, we go from 151 to about 300K. That's the biggest difference right there from an overall general enterprise fund, excuse me, general fund bottom line. I wanna see where y'all are at on that, if y'all wanna discuss that anymore. Commissioner Peebles, you brought it up, sir, so I'll turn it back over to you for your thoughts there.

My thoughts are still kind of the same. If the millage rate is going up, we've got to make some sacrifices. I mean, let's be clear, the city has made a ton of sacrifices already. I believe the budget currently stands at like a 23% to 25% cut, which is probably one of the largest cuts in the history of Lynn Haven. But that being said, I do think that if the millage rate does go up, then we need to do it so that we have more surplus or unallocated funds that we can use in in the sense of an emergency so as much as i love the the i am a fan of the cra uh because it is you know essentially grant money for more money uh 75 with the 75 i do think it should be a little bit lower than that i'm i'm fine with 50 or 60. commissioner tinder you talked about this too ma'am and go into 50 percent yeah

Again, I've said it before, I think the CRA has outlived itself, but 50% is certainly better than 75%.

I do think from a bare bones operational perspective that would effectively double our emergency, I'll call it mad money for a lack of a better term, emergency fund. I know, Mr. Beshear, you're on the Finance Committee. You're chuckling. You know what I mean, though. It's some bare bones, oh, my gosh, emergency. Here's that jar of cash, right? So, Commissioner Perna, where are you standing tonight, sir, on the CRA 50% versus 75%?

I think we left it at 75 at a 4.35. We got information that our state funds were lower. We should have raised our millage. We didn't. We're at the point we are where we agreed before. I think that we're making a knee-jerk reaction if we pull the CRA funding down. Ms. Kiki? You did a synopsis the last time we met in our workshop. Over time, how much money would the CRA be getting between now and the sunset of the CRA? And you can see that it's a much larger number than the amount of money we'd be creating a surplus for in one year. We're making a knee-jerk reaction. If I can do the synopsis again, please.

Yes. Harold, can you put my screen up, please?

Stand by, everybody.

And, Mayor, while he does that, too, on page 7 of your packet, just to remind everyone, it is a 21 percent budget cut, as Commissioner Peebles discussed earlier. It is a huge difference in last year's budget of $68 million. We are at $54 million. That is the general and enterprise funds, including the CRA. The general fund budget this year is $22,196,794, which is a 14 percent cut from last year.

All right, so thank you, Commissioner Pernaut. This is the report that I presented to you at the last workshop. I'll just briefly introduce it. I know that you've seen it before. The columns on the left are historical data for what we received from the county. Let me try and get my cursor where you can see it, see where it says county portion. So since 2007, when the CRA started, THE CITY HAS RECEIVED AN AVERAGE OF A 9% INCREASE OVER THAT TIME PERIOD. SO THESE ARE THE ACTUALS FROM THE COUNTY'S PORTION. THIS IS THE ACTUAL FOR THE CITY'S PORTION. OVER THE COURSE OF TIME, SINCE 2007, EACH YEAR HAS INCREASED BY 8% FOR THE CITY'S PORTION AND 9% FOR THE COUNTY'S PORTION. And projecting that out over the life of the CRA as you voted on it, which is determined 2043, the city would continue to participate with $17,672,000. we would leverage that money to receive $26,288,000. That assumes a 9% increase annually until 2043. And as I told you before, that seems like an unrealistic attainable number just on its face, 9% a year, oh my gosh. However, during those years, we had three major events. We had the housing collapse in 2008, we had COVID and we had Hurricane Michael. So I cannot tell you what unforeseen circumstances will happen between now and 2043. However, statistically speaking, UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES ARE ALREADY BUILT INTO THESE NUMBERS. SO NOW WHAT I DID FOR YOU BEFORE WAS I CHANGED THESE NUMBERS AND IN THE BUDGET THAT I PREPARED, PER YOUR EARLIER INSTRUCTIONS, I CHANGED ALL THIS TO 75%, MEANING A 25% REDUCTION IN THE CRA, WHICH TURNS INTO THE CITY PARTICIPATES with $13,254,000 and we leveraged that to $19,716,000 from the county's participation. I can change these numbers at will. You tell me what you want it to look like and I can project those numbers out for you.

And just remember, when we lower it, it's not coming back.

Yeah, understood. An open question that we can't answer today is what happens if Amendment 3 passes in November? Thank you. Sorry about that. What I said was one question we don't know at this point is if Amendment 3 passes in November, what that does to our CRA long term for both Bay County and for Lynnhaven. And none of us can answer that today. So where are y'all at then with 4B here? I'm just trying to gauge a consensus. We've talked about 50%. We've talked about 70%. Commissioner Peebles talked about even 60%. We need to kind of set a pace here and move forward.

I'm in agreement with Commissioner Perno. I think if we cut this too much, it's... We're putting a lot of money on the table and I'm not for cutting any more than, down more than 75%. Okay.

Copy that. Commissioner Peebles, any final thoughts on this?

This is not like a silver bullet item for me, as you said earlier. So my thing is I just want us as a team to talk it out and really decide as a whole, try to get as much unity as possible in making this decision. So if it's my vote on whether it should be 50 or 75, I'm not a silver bullet on this. This is one of those things where we're looking at pros versus cons. It's not as simple as it's bad or it's good. There is a lot of pros to have 75 instead of 50, but there's also, you know, that's down the road. So what do we want to focus on? Do we want to focus on down the road and how this is going to help us down the road, or do we want to focus on the here and now? It's really what we need to be looking at. If your opinion is down the road, then yeah, we need to do the 75. If your opinion is we need to do the budget and only focus on this year, then it's the 50.

it we just need to as a commission decide what our goal is if our goal is down the road i'm fine with the 75. okay well i'm fine with 50 i'm fine with 75 i can live with either um it is what it is i think um i think we have i think we have room to you know you We're talking about saving a hundred and some thousand dollars versus, and over time, losing it looks like you know uh eight nine million dollars okay um and and if it goes away tomorrow if it goes away within a with amendment three so be it we got we we gotta huddle up and and and and make decision then but to do something knee-jerk like this right now oh and and to make it go away for a long and say it stays around for a long period we don't get it back we don't get it back Fair. You know, I think we have a non-advalorium assessment to take a look at, whether we're going to do the annual increase. That'll help the citizens out. You know, we don't necessarily need to do that, you know, per se. You know, there's stuff further down in the agenda we could conditionally, you know, help the budget, you know, in the favor of the taxpayer as well. Fair. So for what it's worth, I just wanted to say that. Mayor, if I may?

Yes, ma'am. So if we go ahead and vote 75% on CRA tonight, we can cut it back at a later date.

We sure can, and the mayor said that the good people in the state of Florida might do it for us through a referendum in November.

Well, and because, like the mayor said also, we don't know what the future will bring. Heck, the county can show up and say they're out of money and they can't match us.

It can be done at a later date. I won't be here, but y'all will.

Well, and were you asking at a later date, Commissioner Tender, as in our next meeting to finalize, as in the mill rate, or...

No, she's talking down the road, right? You're talking down the road?

I'm talking the whole CRA business. As long as we have the option to cut it way back or drop it later on if things go south, then we can do that. Yes, we're going to have to. And I've made very clear how I feel about it. It's my first priority.

I think City Manager already told us if Amendment 3 passes, we're not having only one meeting in November. We're having two. We'll have a special meeting afterwards. We'll start this call session.

okay so tonight we're just doing the military so this part is on the budget itself the only two sticking points we seem to have was the animal shelter and the cra so we're walking through both of those to try to get everybody to a consensus so that we can vote on this tonight after we hear from the folks and get their input so we're going to motion mayor sir go ahead sam so

I'll say this. If we can agree that the focus on the CRA, if we leave it at 75%, if we shift the focus from the paint programs and the residential side to help people that already have houses to actually do things that will bring in revenue to the city, which would be businesses more so, because that brings in more revenue to the city, I am fine with the 75%.

Okay.

So with that being said, I'll go ahead and make the motion to approve the budget where we keep the animal shelter and have the CRA at 75%.

I'll second that and I'll resonate with Commissioner Peebles that we're all on the CRA board and we can convene at the next meeting and we could direct the CRA director accordingly.

Thank you, sir.

So I second that motion.

Thank you, gentlemen. We have a motion and a second to fund the CRA at 75% and the animal shelter at 100%.

So I would ask that you not make the motion to fund the CRA and fund the animal shelter, but to approve the budget as presented.

The budget with those two hot topic items as such, 75 and funding the animal shelter. 75 for the CRA and the full funding for the animal shelter.

So in preparation for this eventuality, we have put together a different resolution. It's the same resolution number, but it does have a different budget in it, and city manager has a copy of that in front of him.

Okay, so what we have is a motion from Commissioner Peebles. We have a second from Commissioner Pernod. And now, City Manager, you need to read? You need to read?

No, sir. I've already read it by title. You're good?

Okay. So now we'll open up the floor. Mr. Beshear, then I hear Mr. Zach Detweiler. Come on up, Mr. Beshear. Different resolution. And then Mr. Scray. Come on up. Which one? Oh, sir. Okay. Okay.

First, when you say this budget is $54 million and it's a certain percentage less than the $68 or $65 was last year, be aware that it was $54, $55 a couple of years ago and carry forward funds pushed it up into the 60s. That could happen again with this budget, I think. I don't know what projects are ongoing, but you may have some carry forward that carries into the next budget that will increase the budget number. So be aware that those percentages, they're just momentary. I wanted to mention that. But I wanted to say... The reason that y'all get frustrated and the citizens get frustrated is a lot of times it's lack of carry-through on what you said you're going to do. At the last budget workshop, while I don't agree with it, Y'all pretty much came to the conclusion or agreement that you were going to fund the animal shelter and that you were going to do the CRA at 75%. Now you've come to this meeting and there's a lot of different objectives, a lot of different stuff going on, but it's frustrating. And I know y'all get frustrated, we get frustrated. You'll say what you're going to do and then it doesn't happen. A good example of this, and I almost hate to bring it up, is the library. We had a non-binding referendum on the library yesterday. that we wanted to partner with Northwest Florida Library System and open a little library. What happened to that? Nothing. There's no follow-through. It's never come back. It's never been addressed. I don't want to see that happen with what Commissioner Warwick did tonight. He wants you to... agree to talk to the county commissioners or talk to whoever to try to get this going and to evaluate the animal shelter and see what the best options are going forward. I don't want to see a year from now that we've not done that, that we've said we were going to do it, but it falls off the table and it never comes back. We don't want to see that. I don't want to see that as a citizen. I want to see the follow through. I want to see it happen. It's what I really want to see tonight is for you all to commit to whatever your budget is and to commit to not dipping into the unallocated funds if you have something that is not truly an emergency that would cause you to do that. That to me, as a citizen, those unallocated funds need to be just left unallocated unless we have a true emergency. Thank you.

Yes, sir. Mr. Zach, if you'll hold back. I did not see the individual behind. Come on up, sir. Come on up. Our Navy veteran. Come on up, sir. Do you need to sit down? We can bring you a chair if you need to.

No, no. Okay. My name is Mark Broomiller from 514 New York Avenue. I spoke to a couple people and I spoke to many residents. How about the discussion about the shelter, the animal shelter? And understand the situation you guys are in. You're not going to satisfy everybody. I mean, you've got to meet what's best for the city. But that doesn't mean the community, the residents of City 11, they even step up and do their part. I've seen many communities, many cities, that stepped up and they volunteered to our committee at the shelters. They were able to advocate to see what the needs are. They reported back to the city officials, said, hey, this is what we need. We need maintenance. I mean, maintenance is a big budget. Manpower is a big budget. But this is where the community can step up is by having this community of five people or seven people. They have a president, vice president. They're responsible for doing fundraising, donations, and maintenance working. Have work days like two times a year. deep cleaning, pressure washing, painting the walls, doing the, you know, just maintenance stuff like that. And also get food donated, blankets, toys, whatever is needed. They also can work with animal rescues. You were talking about temporary sheltering animals and ship them out. Well, there's thousands of rescues that will come and take the dog or cat and go find a home. But what I'm saying is the community needs to step up and help because they're the ones, they're not coming to the meeting, they're not expressing their feelings and everything, expressing their thoughts to you all, but they're sitting back home and, you know, bitching, excuse me, but bitching about it. but they need to come up here and help. And I would like to see a committee volunteers and help, you know, save the city some money, the cause, and stuff like that. Thank you.

Thank you so much, sir. All right, Mr. Detweiler, come on up. Mr. Scray, you're on deck. Good evening.

Good evening, guys. I'm going to talk to my Air Force guys real quick because I know you guys are going to know exactly what I'm talking about. Air Force has a habit of setting a five-year priority, creating an integrated priority list, and then stacking and racking and making sure that those priorities are done fiscally responsibly year over year. If you can't do it in one, you do it in two and three and four, but you have a five-year plan. Our storm bond is gonna go to what, 2033? Some of our other bonds might go a little bit longer. This is year one. This isn't an end all. I know several of you have said that. Good cuts were made. No cuts are good, but real cuts were made. Let me say it that way. fund the animal shelter keep the cra the cra honestly is good money as long as the county is going to continue to put it in it's good money it's free money almost because the citizens are already paying for it and that's one discussion that we can have if november doesn't you know if three doesn't pass in november a lot of the citizens of lynn haven are getting double billed by the county 95% of the roads in the county or in the city paid for by you guys, not the county. Still getting taxed for it the same as everyone in unincorporated is, so on and so forth. I've had that discussion with many of you guys. But we can talk about how money is being spent. CRA can fund infrastructure, can fund buildings, it can purchase land, it can fund parks, it can do a whole heck of a lot of things. Million dollars. You can do a lot with it. You can go after matching grants that are, you guys pay 25 and the state pays 75 and you can turn a million dollars into four million dollars. Hell, we got what, 4.3 million in a CDBG grant? That's 100%, which means the city paid zero. It's a useful thing to have. Cutting that money out is just cutting your knees off. What I would like to see moving forward, you have a budget, you got some breathing room, you can get through this year. Those amendment three cuts won't start till 27. So if it happens, you talk about it next year, but this year, Mission works at it. Let's start focusing on efficiencies. Let's start focusing on the how things are done. Are our people acting efficiently? Are we using them the best? Could we get software that improves the way that things are acting so that we don't need certain positions or we can adjust how they're being done so that you guys have better eyes, better ears, and so does the city and the people. let me finish by saying this as a libertarian i'm excited we're starting the lynn haven community fund we are about to sign the paperwork and we're hoping by the beginning of next year we're going to be a 501c3 we are going to come to the aid of this city we are going to raise money and we are going to help wherever we can and i'm sure ryan's going to talk about it but just so that you guys know it is coming and we are here to help thank you sir mr scray

At the last budget workshop I brought up solvency within our city. We have multiple enterprise funds that are barely solvent. You keep talking about examples of emergencies and you keep bringing up one popular example. Broken pipe the general fund shouldn't be paying for a broken pipe. We got a sewer and water fund for that Why is that not paying for that emergency? It's because it's not solvent because you're afraid to raise the rates to cover for emergencies And you'd rather take from the general fund Am I wrong if you think I'm wrong raise your hand and speak up I

Let me reiterate, the general fund does not pay any repairs in the enterprise funds. No transfer.

So why do we keep bringing up that example then? It's not even paying for it. What emergencies do the general funds pay for with unassigned funds?

It would have to be a street department emergency, an emergency in the parks, an emergency in the police department, the fire department, this building, for example, a water pipe burst, anything that the general fund relates to.

Okay. So that's your water pipe fund right there. That's what you're talking about, that one.

We'll go with that.

All right. I'll tone it back a little bit for that stupid pipe upstairs that broke. Hopefully that got all resolved. But I'm going to say that solvency is absolutely key here. And with all the work you guys did on this in six budget meetings is great. But what you do the next six months is really where it comes down rubber meets the road. You know, everybody in Bay County loves to say they're a hard nosed Republican conservative. And I've never seen so many hard nosed Republican conservatives talk about wanting lower taxes and about how come they're not getting everything for damn near free. You can't have both. You want something, you pay for it. Mr. Switzer likes to talk about how if people want to vote for Amendment 3, if they don't want to vote for Amendment 3, then they should just get rid of their exemption, if they have an exemption. There's so much hubbub out there, and I understand people don't want to pay a lot. I'm exempt, I've said that before, if the exemption's available. But if you put it on the ballot that City of Lynnhaven is going to remove all exemptions, I will be out there championing yes. I will say yes, I will vote for that. Everybody's exemptions are gone. That's just not in the purview of the city though. That's a state thing. There's a lot of examples of how from the 60s when Florida was this free state and a lot of local government rule, home rule, and now the last 20, 30 years they've just been clawing it back year after year. This last year alone, 10 amendments out of Tallahassee that took away municipal rights to govern themselves. Ten amendments. That means our representatives, Jay Trumbull, who, if you get an email back from Jay Trumbull, having gotten one in six damn months, that's my representative? No, he's not my representative. He's not my senator. He doesn't represent me. If he represents you, congrats for you. We need to do more to protect us now because the people in Tallahassee that we voted for, they don't give a damn about us.

Thank you, sir. All right, two more, Mr. Prescott, and then Mr. Schweitzer behind him. Good evening, sir.

Say one more thing about efficiency. There's an old saying, it's if you keep on doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep on getting what you've been getting. That budget's $54 million. you put out an edict through this organization, cut your budget 10%. That's $5.4 million that you're under budget that can use to pay all the debts or whatever. That's what I'm advocating is reduced expenses. And you can't tell me it can't be done. You just got to burn the bridge down, get rid of people's protected items and make it happen. You just got to e-dict to your department heads for that to happen. And it's got to happen. Tell them, if you want to stay here employed, that's what you're going to do. It's tough enough.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Schweitzer, come on up. Good evening.

Good evening. I love that guy. He thinks just like I'm thinking. It's very interesting to watch this. You have manufactured a budget where it's barely balanced. It's like you're trying to do the least and not cut down deep enough so that you have extra money. Right? So you only have a $300,000 cushion if you make these cuts. Make it a million dollars. Cut these departments. I think if I understand that right, there's only one other animal shelter that a city municipal... that in Florida, was that right? Are we the, us in Crestview?

Comparable to our population size, there's only one other one.

Okay, so. In Florida. Yeah, thanks, thanks, Jamie. I love dogs. My dog is my best friend. I work at home and, you know, he's an 85-pound Labradoodle. Just because you love a dog doesn't mean that we need an animal shelter. You can love animals just as much without an animal shelter as you do with an animal shelter. So that needs to go. You can create it so that you're the ones who need to create this. You're complaining that we're only $100,000 above the $12 million and it's so lean. You're doing that. Make the change. You can, I mean, it's there to do. You're just not doing it. That's all I have to say. Thanks.

Thank you, sir. Anyone else? Mr. Langford.

I mean, if you think back where we were last year, y'all approved a budget, not you, Mayor, you weren't up here. Just over $2 million come out of our savings account to keep the lights on. This year, not only have you balanced the budget, we have some level of surplus. It's not a lot, all right? So number one, I just want to recognize that. Thank you for not robbing our savings account to pay the light bill. um there's been a lot of talk about amendment three and man there's a there's a whole another rabbit hole we could go down with that there's still some cuts to be made but what i would ask the city manager and the finance director to do is to remember the last two financial workshops next year that's where we need to start BUDGET WORKSHOP NUMBER ONE, THE QUOTE UNQUOTE STRATEGIC PLANNING OR THE STRATEGIC I call it the wish list is what it is. Look, we wasted so much time with budget workshop number one through basically three. You need to start at budget workshop number four where we said, okay, now we're down to cuts, right? We came in here and we presented the commission with a budget of an ungodly deficit. I was embarrassed. Had I been sitting up there, I would have gotten out, I would have walked out. This is ridiculous. We cannot continue to do that. We've got to start with a reasonable budget to present to the commission to where we're actually is something that's workable. I mean, we were in here talking about city employees going down to four-day work weeks. All right, now we've cut down to a point to where, okay, now it's a sensible budget. So all I'm asking for is next budget season, and thank you, Commissioner Warrick, for champion starting this early, this whole budget process earlier on. But we've got to reevaluate our budget workshops in years ahead, and where do we start? Because where we started and where we are at now are two completely different areas. So let's start at that 50 percent point next year. Let's bring something to the Commission that's workable, numbers that you all can deal with, and we'll go from there. If Amendment 3 passes, I mean, there's a whole other conversation, like I said, to happen. But I just want to recognize the fact that you guys are not dipping into our reserves yet. to fund the city next year. I've come a long way with that, and I want to go backwards. So thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Any others? Sir, come on up. While he's coming up, we'll... After the public commentary and we're able to vote, just so you know, we're going to take a five-minute recess, or maybe ten, depending on how long the bathroom lines are, before we get started. We'll give everybody a bathroom and a stretch break. It's a long meeting, so... We'll take a break here in just a couple minutes. Sir.

Hello. Good evening. Seth Howard. Moving to Lynnhaven after you all have really started to party about all this data or information to vote on, for awkward giving my two cents, but here it is. The animals don't even know we're fighting for them right now. They don't have that kind of frontal lobe ability. We should so fight for these animals and fight for the shelter. Also, when I envision what we can do for animals, I see something like this, and it's kind of radical, but There's so much space in a community, whether it's one cat per classroom or one cat per prison cell for inmates in recovery with drug addiction issues or one dog in that Lynn Haven Vet Center sitting in that waiting room to talk about PTSD or TBI. It'd be great to have a little dog to hold on to. There's so much creative space to put animals in every community. I also heard somebody talking about the 08-09 housing crisis, which is one of my favorite subjects to talk about, and how it was unforeseen and how it impacted this budget. It was foreseen by people studying mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, and collateralized debt obligations, which is all talked about in Michael C. Lewis's movie, The Big Short, which breaks down how the 08-09 housing crisis unfolded. And this impacts Lynn Haven because it's the kind of stuff I talk about when I come up here. And if you have somebody who's studying MBSs and CDOs and all this other stuff that ended up creating the 09 crisis, you could have foreseen that as Michael Burry, who runs the Sly on Capitol, which is the movie The Big Short was based off of, He has one eye in Asperger's and was able to completely foresee the 08-09 housing crisis, which is why I think this community and all communities need somebody who is totally dialed in on all of that kind of stuff, macro and micro economic trends. I'm just going to leave it on animal shelter. Animals matter so much. There's lots of loose pit bulls running around there attacking people. There's wild cats out there that need to be taken in and everything in between. So I just don't really know what the thing is between the commissioner and I don't know. I just love animals. I know animals love us. Like the best part of being a human is being surrounded by all these different crazy animals, and I love them. And thank you for letting me share. Thanks.

Thank you. All right. Ms. Day, are you raising your hand? Okay. Ms. Day. Gina, are you back there? Could you take the microphone to Ms. Day, please? Who? I'm not seeing her. Okay. Hang on, Gina, turn it on for you, ma'am. Stand by just a second, y'all.

That's not on either.

He's swapping the batteries out in it. Harold, the IT miracle worker.

While we wait, Mayor, I think the lady right there had a comment as well.

Did you want to say something, ma'am?

I just want to once again remind y'all that we are the City of Lynn Haven. Okay, so what we do doesn't have to be what another city does. We don't hold ourself to the standards of other cities. It's just like if Sally jumps out the window, you're gonna jump out the window because Sally does. We have our own needs and our own people here in lynn haven to attend to and that's who y'all are supposed to take care of and as far as the couch shelter y'all need to put up a thing for the people who want to keep the couch shelter they do need to come up just like this gentleman said and form a committee and figure a way out to do it i believe it's possible if the people get involved and that's it thank you ma'am

Gina, is Ms. Day ready now?

Yes. Yes, she has it taken care of. I would like to ask a couple of questions. Would it be possible, and since the CRA is a big to-do, would it be possible to have a workshop with the CRA? that the citizens that would like to attend come with your fax and let us have a CRA workshop meeting. And then the next issue would be, and Mr. Lightfoot will have to verify this, it happens to be that, I think you received a letter July the 31st from Mr. Schubert that says he doesn't want to do anything with the animal shelter that's out.

Yes, ma'am. It was part of Mr. Wark's presentation earlier.

Okay. So if he's already told us that, why do we keep talking about it? Because number one, he doesn't want to take it on. So why can't we just go ahead and forget it and move on with it and keep the animal shelter? We have no other way of coming out of it. I mean, if the county doesn't want to take us, who does? So it's really, I mean, he has a copy of the letter, so maybe if you don't have a copy of it, it might be nice to read that letter.

Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Your point's well taken. Please do. And we did, to your first point, the CRA, we did discuss the CRA, and Mr. Jenke did multiple presentations in the different workshops. We've talked about it.

Well, that's a meeting. That's not a workshop.

We've had six budget workshops.

I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying a CRA workshop meeting only.

A standalone.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

That'll work.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

All right. Any other public comments on 4B? If not.

Mayor, before I do, I'd like to clarify the first four budget workshops were most definitely not a waste of time. That was directed by the commission to have, and it is not the place of staff to decide what is to be cut from the budget. It is the place of the commission to decide the priorities of the city. So those first, especially the first workshop was to lay out the priorities of the city to give the list of equipment Vehicles, what we hear from residents with their request are capital improvement projects. We talk about five and ten year plans. We have one for each department. Water, sewer, storm water, sanitation, parks, everyone has a capital improvements plan. So it's not the choice of the staff to bring to you a budget that's already cut. It is the commission's decision to decide and direct staff of what's going to be cut. So I would say that the first four budget workshops were very informational. We needed them, and that's how we'll start again next year. You cannot start a budget at 50% of what your funding is, and you cannot start a budget at the same number that you are this year. As we've seen from fuel prices and everything else throughout the year, the numbers drastically change. So with that, Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Pernault? Yes. Commissioner Wark? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

You're going to think I'm crazy, but what are we voting on?

4B, the budget.

Do what?

The budget, item 4B. No. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. All right. So can we close out this piece of the public hearing now? All right, we are closing out item 4B, the second part of the public hearing at 8.02 p.m. Central Time. Let's take a 10-minute bathroom and stretch break and we'll reconvene. Testing, testing. All right, there you go. All right, everybody, let's hunker down for part two. Hopefully this second part will flow. Hope everybody had a chance to stretch and do a comfort break if needed. We have, if you're looking at the agenda, we've gone through 4A and 4B, and we're now to the consent agenda. The consent agenda consists of five separate things, actually, one, two, three, four, five, six, six things, approval of the meeting minutes of August 25th, auction of surplus equipment for two city vehicles, Accept a land donation of 0.76 acres for drainage maintenance and access from the Forehand Family Trust. Approval of CDBG grant for Florida and Ohio Avenue. This is the streetscape project. Just extends out till September of 2027. um auction of surplus equipment smith co field rake asset 3939 and then the termination of the flock contract so um that's kind of a no-brainer pc did theirs this morning we still have to officially step out of the contract um but we can close this out today with the official termination as part of that. So those are the six items.

Motion to approve. Second.

Unanimous consent. Second. We have a motion and two seconds. Thank you, all three gentlemen. discussion for these consent items.

Just a couple things on those. We did do a title search on the property that's being donated and it came back clear. So the claim deed should be fine. There's no issues with that. And there is a I do think there is a way to get out of the flock contract without having any kind of issues based on a force majeure and the fact that the state and the county have pulled permission for us to use their land for these. So that would be the basis that I can find in the contract for us to be able to terminate it without having any kind of penalties or anything.

So just to be clear, we will be authorizing the FLOC contract termination. The 12.5K that is in the budget will have to stay there until you are able to clarify there is no withdrawal fees or anything like that in the contract. But when that's done, those funds will return to the general fund.

I'd say it's a term of years contract. So at this point, the city technically is on the hook for the rest of the contract, unless we can get out of it and they agree to let us, let the city terminate based on this provision. So we'll have to send a letter to them with the termination.

But you're on it.

That doesn't mean they will necessarily accept it, but that's what the commission will be voting to do.

I'm sure they'll have about 411 municipalities from across the state doing the same thing. All right.

More than likely.

So we have a motion and a second. Any discussion needed tonight for these six agenda items?

Ms. Parker, come on up.

Good evening, ma'am.

I'm going to talk about the Chris Forehand situation. Margo Anderson had given me a lot of information, so I'm just going to go ahead and read what she said. I'd like to know how the commission can accept this gift from Chris Forehand, who does business with the city. Please, City of Lynn Haven commissioners, explain why you rejected the check for $85,000, which James Finch offered to repair the splash pad. at Kinsol, refused his offer to pay for a forensic audit for the city, and then paid off 2% loan the city had with just to avoid business with him. Paying off the low interest loan took millions out of the city budget. The city could have bought an annuity, paid the loan with interest, and still had their money. Chris Forehand received immunity from the prosecutors for his criminal activity after the storm. There were interviews, public court documents in which he says, to indicate city attorney Adam Albritton, kids need shoes, meaning he needs the Tetra Tech contract approved so that he can make money. The text messages between he and former city manager Michael White are quite illuminating as well, also publicly filed court documents. If the commission accepts his gift from Chris Forehand, it is dirty money. Forehand gives nothing with getting something in return, asked former city manager Michael White. Forehand gave him an envelope full of cash according to the FBI 302. There's a lot more. As far as what he needs to do for past behavior, telling the truth about what happened and how he helped Derwin White and the Bay County Sheriff's Office indicate the mayor, which was her, would be a great start, but he never will, because he would then indicate himself, Vicki Gaynor, Ricky Ramey, Dan Russell, and others. You might ask him at the city commission meeting how much money he made from World Claim, the city insurance adjuster. That all documented as well. Mayor Lowry, I invite Forehand to publicly deny anything I just wrote on your page in the comments on this post. As if anyone is still wondering why I do not care for Mr. Forehand, he hand-carried the false invoices purporting to be property cleanup at my home in my mother's Tetra Tech to make sure the invoices have been paid by the city and forwarded to FEMA, assuring that I would be indicated on a federal charge, a charge later disproved in federal court evidentiary hearing. I hope my hometown has more integrity than to accept his gift. Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Schweitzer and then Mr. Scray. Long time no see.

Yeah, regarding number 10, flock termination. I don't really agree with that. Don't these people know that they have no expectation of privacy while in a public space? I'm just kidding. Thank you for that. It's only a third over for me. I want the audit. I want the flock audit assist going back years so that we know if this thing was misused. We have to do that and it can be done. That's what's catching all these bad cops. It's not police departments auditing themselves. It's the flock audit helping them do that. So we need to do that. That would go... I want that to be so clean. I want there to be nothing on there. But if there is, we need to know. Because they want this thing back. They're going to do everything they can to get this thing back. And we can't have that. unless we can trust it. And that's the only way I can trust this is if it's audited going back as far back as we can. I think that makes sense. I think that's a fair request. I've already asked it. It's been asked to the chief who says, I don't know how to do it. You know what? I went on chat GPT, how to run the flock audit assist. Everything's right there. Click here, do this, do that. So maybe it's something you have to call flock and say, Hey, you know, maybe you can give us this. I don't know, but I want that. Um, There was something else.

You're going to buy us all lunch tomorrow?

Maybe that was it. This was it. I wish, in my dreams, I think, I daydream about this. I was like, what if we would have done this? Everything that... that Governor DeSantis said, I've said right here. I've said it for nine months that this, can we please pause this thing? Because it's out of control. And it's like, we could have been the one city in Florida that was like, hey, look what Lynn Haven did, man. They were like kind of clued in. And like we're concerned about this and then maybe we would have found out that we researched it and we liked it. But we just kind of, you know, just kind of went with it. Oh, it's not unconstitutional. It's like I'm like screaming from the rooftops that there's problems with this thing. It's not a pothole. It's not we need a sidewalk. It's like something in the Constitution. It's our rights that I feel you guys should have pushed it way up on the priority list. There were so many unanswered questions on this thing. Still are. So let's get the answers. It's been said that Tricky Ricky used this thing to track a woman. I want to know if that's true. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Scrape.

I APPRECIATE THE INVITATION FOR COMMENT ON CONSENT AGENDA SINCE THAT'S USUALLY NOT THE CASE HISTORICALLY. BUT I WANT TO POINT OUT A COUPLE OF THINGS THAT MS. PARKER HAD SHARED ABOUT DONATIONS FROM MR. FINCH. I BELIEVE ALL THE ONES SHE LISTED OFF THAT WERE NOT ACCEPTED WERE UNDER THE PAST ADMINISTRATION. OBVIOUSLY MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION WERE PART OF THAT COMMISSION, WHETHER YOU WERE INFLUENCED BY THAT PAST ADMINISTRATION TO you know not accept or accept or maybe with ongoing litigation attorneys were giving you advice i understand that it's not a free pass or a cop out i'm just saying that's kind of the circumstances i believe under the current city manager and the current commission we've accepted now two donations from mr finch one for a pavilion and one for a piece of land So just want to put that out on the record. I think the city was in a certain stance with a very generous donor in the community under a past administration, and I think that stance has changed, and it shows that things can change in the community. um and on david's note on why he stood up there here and said all he said about flock i mean that's that's the darn truth he did we all know that we all had to listen to it i've told him you know numerous times my stance on flock but i think ultimately what it comes down to is what he was talking about earlier with big big government whatever his slogan is Sometimes at the municipal level, people, and I know Jamie's talked about this, people make the safe choice at the lower levels. So when the state comes out and says, hey, you got to get rid of it, well, that's pretty damn easy for you guys to agree with that because you have no choice. I think FLOC was a great tool that would help us catch child abductors and find missing seniors. some of the other cases that it solved i'm sure it did property damage claims things like that i don't care as much about that um i think it's there's more misuse than anything i think it's great that we're obviously in compliance it sucks that we're going to lose that tool that was WAS USEFUL. HOWEVER, AT THE DISCRETION OF, LIKE DAVID SAID, THE DISCRETION OF CIVIL LIBERTIES, LYNN HAVEN WAS LEADING THE CHARGE ON UPDATING CITY POLICIES TO COMBAT THAT AND GET RID OF ANY PEOPLE THAT WERE MISUSING IT UNDER FORMER CHIEF BLANCHARD AND NOW OUR CURRENT CHIEF BLAYLOCK. WE WERE TRYING TO SET A PRECEDENT AND IT'S JUST THE LIFESPAN ON SETTING THAT PRECEDENT HAS RUN SHORT. It's unfortunate that we won't get to see how that unfolds. But if you listen to all the conspiracy theories online, it'll just be replaced with something else. So whenever that tool comes forth, please carry the same mindset of due diligence of it's a tool and it needs to meet the civil liberties test. And if somebody misuses it, not only are they terminated, they're prosecuted. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. And I saw our fourth volunteer, our fourth speaker. Come on up.

Seth Howard, I just wanted to let you know I'm reading off something here. On September 30th, 2025, Flock Safety Vice President of Strategic Relations and Business Development, Bob Carter, logged into the Dunwoody Police Department's flock network and viewed a single camera feed, one labeled for the children's gymnastics room at the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta. He viewed no other cameras in the city's roughly 400 camera system that day. And I don't know why a children's gymnastics room needs a flock camera, but Barb Carter is all over it. And this type of perversion is why I don't support the flock cameras. And that's the VP of safety.

watching children stretch and skin tightly adores getting pretty uncomfortable in here isn't it so i'll stop talking about it however i think lynn haven and all communities deserve to watch remember community watch flock wants to take the community out of that i can show you a video here mayor i just moved here in february i can show you a video of my phone of an unconscious woman I found in a tree line at 3.30 in the morning doing community watch. Nobody asked me to do. I'm a Marine veteran. You're a veteran. You know about this community watch and how important it is. There should be a roster that Lynn Haven has, maybe two dozen strong, or veterans that you filter. You're Lieutenant Colonel. I love that. You know what ethos is and how to prove it. And those should be... Signatures should be there at the beginning of the month. Hey, I live in Cali Court. So once a day, I go for a couple of walks, but it's really a foot patrol. But don't let my neighbors know that. They'd probably freak out. Community watch is so important. I'm so glad we're getting rid of flock. And I also knew it was going to end because of a business model called the law of diminishing returns. And I use LDR all the time to my benefit. And I think if y'all should, y'all would have, I think y'all should have definitely saw that the diminishing returns was setting in and said let's beat the conclusion that we all know is going to happen because of this business model that's like pretty standard 101 and get the social credit for ending it since a lot of people don't want it and it's going to end anyway so why not why not take the victory there but I really think community watch matters I show you a lot of videos I show you a two-year-old abandoned toddler I found in a alleyway I got cops in the video and everything I love doing community watch. There's lots of veterans here, very capable and competent. I think y'all should have an official, forget flock, have an official community watch roster. Thank you for letting me share.

Thank you, sir. All right, anyone else? I'm gonna stay. Gina. Thank you for your assistance, ma'am.

Thank you. I would like to ask you a question, and I don't know, maybe Chris can answer this. Back in January of 25, it was over $74,000 that was authorized. It was a contract that went to the amount of approximately over $2 million to Tetra Tech. So that agreement was going to go through December the 31st of 25. That over the $2 million is a contract ceiling. So how much money? And you might want to check on this, commissioners. It's very, very important. How much money has Tetra Tech made year by year from 23 to 26? Pay attention to the amount. And I'm sure Kiki probably has all that in order for the budget. Okay, now, why are these projects still open and what is preventing the final reimbursement and closeout of Tetra Tech? So could you look that up for me and somebody maybe bring up the information later? Because this is important. And now, well, Chris, you probably know. You could tell me, I bet.

I'm not sure if any of that has to do with the consent agenda.

It has nothing to do with consent. I can address it during public commentary on my report if you'd like.

Sure, that's fine. The city manager's going to address that tonight, Ms. Day, and the city manager's report for you. It's not part of our consent agenda.

And that's okay. It's about Chris Forehand.

Okay. Thanks for the clarification.

You're welcome.

Yes, ma'am. Anyone else? If not, city manager, call the roll, please.

Commissioner Ward? Yes. Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Commissioner Tender?

Mr. Switzer, you know I support you completely, but my votes, no. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. All right, we're on old business number 11, final reading of ordinance 1191, amending rules of procedure. This would be the rules of order for the city commission to do.

Ordinance number 1191, an ordinance of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, amending Article 3, Division 1 of the City's Code of Ordinances, authorizing rules of procedure to be adopted by resolution of the City Commission, repealing provisions of ordinances in conflict herewith, providing for codification, and providing for an effective date.

Thank you, City Manager. I'm going to ask that we table this. I would like the new City Attorney to be able to review this. Also, as I went through it, I noticed that literally none of my inputs that I asked to be put into this were incorporated. uh... the input that i got from mister jackson our prior attorney was he reviewed it but all he basically saw was commissioner wark's input to him uh... so what i'd really like to do is for us to go through this again i would like the new city manager assuming the new city attorney to be involved as well and do one more scrub on this before we bring this up for approval. In my mind, it's important that all five of us be agreeable, all five of us have legit, valid inputs into it, and it be something that all five of us can work with and be proud of. Plus, having a fresh pair of legal eyes, I think, is nothing but inherent goodness with that. That's my proposal. Any other thoughts or discussion on item 11?

You want to table to the next meeting?

I want to table it until the new city attorney can review it. There are a couple of Robert's Rules of Order type things in there where it's kind of a big gray area. And I would like to have my inputs actually reviewed as well. And then if any other commissioner has any other thoughts or inputs, I would really like those contributions as well to be brought up and looked at. So table it for now until we revise and have the new city attorney look at it.

Any motion?

Yes, sir.

I'll make a motion to table it until it's brought back on the agenda.

Thank you, sir. Second. Thank you, ma'am. I have a motion and a second. Any public commentary regarding this? If not, thank you. City Manager.

Commissioner Perno. Yes. Commissioner Tender. Yes. Commissioner Peebles.

Yes.

Commissioner Warrick. Yes. Mayor Lowry.

Yes. Thank you all for that. I want us to have a really good product we're all proud of. So let's fine tweak it a little more and we'll be good to go. We tabled number 12 already because that's still a work in progress between Commissioner Peebles and our new city attorney. So we're on new business item number 13, discussion and possible approval of resolution 2026-08-579, final stormwater assessment.

Resolution number 2026-08-579, a resolution of the City Commission of the City of Lynn Haven, Florida, approving the fiscal year 2026-2027 non-advalorum assessment role for stormwater-related services, facilities, and programs, directing certification of the assessment role and collection pursuant to the Uniform Assessment Collection Act, confirming notice and imposing and levying stormwater service assessments, providing directions, and providing an effective date.

So two quick things on this, and I wanna open this up and get inputs from the whole commission. This is one opportunity, Commissioner Perna already mentioned this earlier. This is one area.

Thank you, sir, can you hear better now?

Yes, sir. Thank you. Sorry. We have two different potential discussion points on this that I can see. One, this is one area where Commissioner Perno has already talked about. We could reduce the financial impact on our citizens by rather than doing a 3% increase here on the stormwater, we could do a 0%. We could hold as is. It was a mighty big jump last year on a whole lot of folks. Mine actually doubled assessment-wise. And to Mr. Langford and Mr. Ganey, I did not forget my commitment to you that we're going to address the vacant parcels. The city manager and I went back and literally talked about it again today. We can't change it for this pitch tonight, for this new budget, but we will. And I absolutely give you my word, once we get into the new budget, we have to do this tonight and we have to lock it in by the end of the month. We ran out of runway to do it this end of the budget preparation cycle. I publicly commit to you that we will get this fixed. And in fact, the stormwater, I've been very vocal on, I don't like this as a non-advalore. I don't think this is the right way to go about it. Commissioner Warrick had some very creative, thoughtful ways. He did a whole presentation on that back, I think, last December. We will tackle this. I give you my word, we will tackle this and we will make vacant parcels right with stormwater. So that's one thing. I promised y'all that. I haven't forgotten about it. It's just too late in the budget for us to literally change that without screwing up the whole rest of the stormwater budget. But to Commissioner Perno's piece, we could reduce the 3% increase and just hold it as is. We have 12 workers in there. They do good work. That pays their salaries, plus it has a couple hundred thousand dollars of actual disposables, parts and pieces that they use. So that's one thing we can discuss under this new business item. That's what I'm bringing forward and looking for some inputs from the rest of the Commission on this.

Mayor? I make a motion to approve with zero percent increase, keep it the same. Second.

Thank you. Sam, I heard you try to come online, sir.

All right. Well, I guess we'll go first and a second. So it's for discussion now. I was kind of chuckling on mute over there because you said almost exactly how I feel about it, that I've said this in the past. We were just trying, I was trying to at the beginning, I'd never really liked the non out of warm assessment for stormwater. I realize it needs to be funded. I do think I to Mr. Langford's point. The the vacant land thing isn't right. I think now that we we have the Commission that we have, I think we owe it to the city and the citizens. And us as a Commission that this should be a priority item as soon as this budget. is approved. This needs to be a high priority item on figuring out how we're going to fix this thing, because I think we do have the heads together now that we can figure out a better way to fund stormwater. You know, I don't know exactly what that is yet, but I think we have the creative minds now to do that. And if we take, if we start early and we start working on this as a high priority item early on in the season we can fix this thing and make it better as fair as possible to our citizens because stormwater is always going to be an issue it does need to be funded but i think we need to tweak it to be something different it's clearly not working it's not fair to the citizens it's not fair the staff to have to wonder if they're going to get funded every year i mean we got to figure this out and i think now is the time to do it once this budget is passed

Thank you, sir. And Commissioner Pernaut also mentioned we had some very heavy rains here recently. And I received several, as I'm sure other commissioners did, several videos from folks, text, pictures. Hey, I'm having this drainage overflow. This canal is completely over flooded. These are heavy rains and you guys need to come back out and clean this for me, this culvert. Our 12 stormwater workers do a whole lot of yeoman's grunt work, but they do very important yeoman's grunt work, digging ditches and cleaning culverts and all that stuff to give our water a place to go. We're here basically at sea level, just above. They do important work. And as much as I dislike the non-evaluorum as it's set up today that funds stormwater and the vacant parcels is the most messed up piece of that whole equation, I don't think it's right to unfund these 12 workers that are doing good jobs, actually critical, needed jobs. maintenance to shut them down. I think if we continue without the 3% increase, that will help resolve a little bit of the sting of any kind of millage change. Again, it's one of three parts of the final tax bill equation, right? But it sounds like we're all on board with this, or at least supportive of this, and I appreciate that.

Mayor, I would like to clarify it's not a couple hundred thousand dollars just of supplies and salaries. It's $548,000 worth of personnel costs and about $2 million worth of expenses in the stormwater department that covers ditch digging, CIP, which is the lining of the stormwater mains, equipment, engineering work. So it's not just a couple hundred grand of supplies.

Correct me, I misspoke. I was talking about their disposables. Their disposables, about $200,000, right?

So disposables as in replacing culverts. The operating supplies that has been referred to by some of the public as disposables, yes. It's $140,000 worth of pipe. That is where that's charged to, to replace culverts.

That's what I was referring to, not the multimillion dollars of actual infrastructure assets. But I appreciate the clarification there. There's no intent to use a wrong term there. So thank you for that. All right, any other discussion among the commission on this one? Hearing none.

Just one more thing. Just one more thing I just wanted to say. I would like to say that we do owe it to the staff that if we don't do the 3%, that we, again, need to make it a priority to fix this so that they have clarification on what the way is forward.

Yes. And I'd actually like to go back to Commissioner Warwick's proposal from last December, roll the tape back, blow it off, update it as needed, and let's, as a commission, take another hard look at that.

So I would like to add, too, and we can hit this during the next budget, but there's only $24,000 in the budget for the line item for the revenue sufficiency support, which is what we use Stantec for. So if there's an appetite from the Commission to reevaluate that, it's going to cost about 40 to 50 grand. We need to adjust the budget before next meeting if that's what the Commission wants to do.

to go with an as-is versus a 3% increase?

No, no. If the Commission is deciding tonight to not increase the stormwater and in fiscal year 27 to reevaluate the methodology, it's going to cost about $40,000 to $50,000 to do that. We need to adjust the budget accordingly if that's what the Commission is directing tonight.

Sorry, I misunderstood. I understand what you're saying now. Basically, go back to scratch, ground zero. Potentially, what other options do we have with this commission award pitch?

Yes, sir.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. All right. No other comments from the commission? I'll open up the floor. Mr. Langford, I'm giving you the first time, sir. And then Mr. Scray, you're second.

What do you mean? You might want to turn the mic on for this one. I want my five seconds back. What do you mean we've run out of runway? Do you all not understand this was by design? How long have we been knowing this is coming? You said when you took office that you're going to take a good hard look at non-available assessments. Yes, sir. By God, we're here. We've had time for a good, hard, long look at non-Avalon assessments. I've been saying the same thing since 2021. Commissioner Peoples has been saying the exact same thing. Oh, you're right. We got to really take a look at this. Boy, we got to figure this out. And here we are. What's been done? Absolutely nothing. Nothing's been done. Nothing's going to get done. This was by design. You've been through budget workshop after budget workshop after budget workshop trying to figure out a deficit. Knowing all along we had problems to solve with a non-Avalorum assessment. We had a charter review committee that tried to provide something to you all. The citizens of Lynn Haven voted over 90% to do something about non-Avalorum assessments. That still was not important enough to any of you to do anything. Why? Because nothing's been done. So when are you going to do something? Will someone amend a motion? By the first quarter of next year, we will figure this out and we will fix it. Can we do that at least? Maybe that'll help the steam. I'm sitting here looking at a bill. Again, I come up here the exact same time every single year with both bills. I'm paying more for dirt than I am for concrete and everything else. The resolution conflicts itself. The city attorney and I will disagree on this, but it states clearly in the resolution, if you've got less than 400 square feet of impervious areas, you're exempt. But oh, by the way, vacant properties are going to be assessed this way, in a completely different paragraph. I brought it up years ago. The previous city attorney says, man, yep, you know what? He's right. It was a Scribner's error. We need to remove that. This is absolutely garbage. Every year, I get the exact same response. Yep, you're right. Boy, we really need to do something about this. This gentleman back here is getting taxed out the nose for vacant property. We're all pissed about it, but nobody will do anything. So now we're going to elect people to do something about it in April. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. And then you, sir.

Speaking of by design, Corey, if we all recall, I said in the last budget workshop as well, what we have today for stormwater non-advalorum is not what we paid a company tens of thousands of dollars for. The original proposal was for a very specific plan funded in a very specific manner to get the problem solved. A problem that comes with a $30 million price tag for capital improvement projects, if I'm correct, Chris or Kiki. Right, 30 million. How much of this budget will go against those CIPs? None, said at last meeting too. And now you want to lower it down 0% because, I mean, what little surplus we have in the general fund, now we're going to have no surplus in the stormwater fund. And so when something needs to be done, guess what? They're going to be back here asking you for more money. The last meeting I said it's not gonna be popular and I have no problem saying it because it's the fee I pay. You gotta go back to following the original plan. If you're not gonna follow the original plan, stormwater will forever be an issue here. If you wanna try to fund that $30 million with whatever we're trying to do, what, $100,000 a year, which probably will be gone now, It'll be done when my great, great grandchild, if I have one, is up here at this podium asking why you guys didn't or your relatives didn't do anything. That's how long it's going to take because we're not following the original plan. What's the point of having a damn plan if you're not going to follow it? And a plan's only as good as what's that military saying? A plan's only as good as you get punched in the mouth, then you got to figure it out. Well, y'all been getting punched in the mouth again and again and again by Corey every single year. I know this is your first year, but it doesn't feel good to hear him say that, does it? But yet 0% increase because we're not here to fix stormwater. We're here to manage it. And we can't even do that if we're not gonna fund the program properly. And I understand people don't wanna pay it. It sucks. It sucks when you have to pay more to have a place to live. But that's the reality. And I'm sorry. And it's going to hurt people's feelings. And this is just the truth. But Lynn Haven is gentrifying organically. It happens all across the country. It costs more to live in places. And at some point, it costs more than you can afford. So your living situation changes. And it sucks. Been there. Done that. But the bottom line is if we want to continue not funding stormwater properly, stormwater is going to get worse. So you want to do a 0% increase, get ready for more pictures and more videos in 2027.

Thank you, sir. Sir, you're up.

I got a notice from the tax assessor that there would be a hearing two weeks ago at 5.30 to adopt final assessment of a resolution. I'm sure every one of y'all got the same notice. When we got here two weeks ago, how many of you were prepared to do something with that? Two weeks ago, I wanted to find out what this resolution was about. So I contacted the city, and I was told no resolution exists. So you came here two weeks ago with no resolution existing. There was not one. So tonight, we show up with a resolution with a number assigned to it. All the details set up. All you got to do is pull it out of the hat and put it in front of you, and all you have to do is say A. So what did you have to do with that resolution? Nothing. And many of you know who Kelly Westover is. Kelly Westover is the person that sends this tax to the tax assessor's office to put on our tax assessments here. Y'all have nothing to do with it. This is Kelly Westover. Now, this is from Mr. Hartzog, the top man in the tax assessor's office. And y'all don't even know who Kelly Westover is. And this is not from a business. This is from a person. Now, 40 years ago, See, y'all got a resolution here tonight y'all had absolutely nothing to do with. You've got somebody, Kennedy West Rover has a 941 area code phone number, which is down somewhere in the Tampa Bay area, maybe in Sarasota. So now who, I kept up pretty close the last two weeks. to see about this resolution. I can't see where there's any kind of meeting or anything to make a resolution. So where did this resolution pop up with the numbers assigned, with every detail set in it? Did Kelly Westover do this?

City Manager, City Attorney, can you all speak to that?

Yes, sir. Ms. Westover is our consultant with Stantec. We pay Stantec every year to prepare the resolution. It was advertised. We opened the hearing on the 25th. The hearing has continued to today. You all will decide what to do with the stormwater resolution.

Now, he's taking my time, so you'll give me a little few extra seconds.

It was paused.

About 40 years ago, I went and opened a business up in Montgomery, Alabama. It was doing pretty good, so I said, you know, I think I'll open one over at Opelika. And a wise old friend told me, he said, Bill, when you have absentee ownership, absentee gets all the money. Now, we've got absentee city government operating down in Sarasota or Tampa or somewhere. How much are y'all paying them? to do your job. Y'all need to check on and see how much of this money that these people are just dreaming up all this. Because the way, if you look at that detail, you have this thing in levels, and you say with so many feet, you pay this rate. Well, you go one dollar more, and you pay a bigger rate.

Yes, sir.

Is that fair and equal when somebody pays greater fee for one foot more. This whole thing stinks. Thank you, sir. This would be so simple if y'all would have a meeting.

Sir, you've had your three minutes plus some. I gave you some extra. Your three minutes is up. Thank you, sir. Respectfully. have to treat you just like everybody else. You're my senior and I'd give you six minutes if I could, but I can't. It's three minutes.

I understand, but I do want to call your attention. Did y'all pass this thing without any kind of hearing? Without anybody allowed to speak?

Mayor? Can I just ask a simple question? It says here, discussion impossible. Yes, ma'am. Can't we take a harder look at this before we

If we needed to, we can talk about it.

So there is no looking at the methodology this year. It's either we reduce the rate or keep the rate the same or the 3 percent increase.

So what I would like to do, or propose to the rest of the team here, I actually like Mr. Langford's proposal, and Commissioner Pernaut, you motioned for this. I believe you motioned.

Commissioner Warrick motioned.

Was it Commissioner Warrick motioned? I'm sorry, you seconded, right? My apologies. Commissioner Warrick, you made this motion. Would you be willing to amend your motion to no increase, proceed as is currently, We all seem to agree that there needs to be a major hard look overhaul of stormwater. Still no increase, but per Mr. Langford's request, amend to state out clearly our intent in the new budget is no increase. And in the first quarter of the new FY, the city commission will deep dive into this and earnestly work at getting to the bottom of how we need to overhaul and rework the stormwater assessment for Lynnhaven. Would that be something you would be amenable to?

I'm fine with that. So I'll amend my motion. Same motion as before with I plan in the first quarter to relook at stormwater methodology.

Does that also include the direction of changing the budget for the funding?

Yeah, that's the other thing. So it's going to be enterprise fund, not going to affect general fund, right?

Yes, sir. And we have, I mean, it's affordable. We can make it happen.

Okay, so yes.

I'll rescind my second and second that motion.

Sincerely, gentlemen, thank you all for that. So the motion is being amended to add the first quarter focus. I gave you my word, Mr. Langford, and I intend to keep it. So thank you, gentlemen, for being agreeable to that. Any other discussion on stormwater before we vote? Ma'am, come on up.

I just think solutions and education is always a good way to go. I'm not sure. I never had flooding problems at my house till post-Michael, but I had 20 pine trees that I lost. And then, of course, you've got people like my neighbors across the street that just pour more and more concrete like that's the answer. Education. People, you know, in your little thing y'all send out monthly. You know, to help with the water uptake, plant trees. People need to be educated and educated. Why? Because the uptake. And, you know, decrease your concrete or put rock down so it's permeable. But those are easy solutions to get everybody involved in doing their share.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that. That's a thoughtful observation. Ms. Day? Hang on, Ms. Gina.

Yes, I would like to say that listening to the, oh. Well, I thought he already had, okay. Are you ready for me, Mayor? Yes, ma'am. You go ahead, Ms. Day. Thank you so much. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I really want to thank you, Mayor, for being so nice and kind in explaining things to the citizens. I have been to meetings where no one would say anything but make motions, and you didn't even know what was going on. And I do know there's a couple of commissioners up there probably would like for that to happen. But I'm going to continually say to you that I appreciate it so much, and I'm sure that a lot of the people appreciate it. I would like to go back to Stantec. In my first meeting here this past few months ago, I mentioned that. I said, pay attention to the year 23 on. It does go back to 20, but a lot of people don't want to take that time out to read. Stantec is the reason we are in the condition because Lightfoot, I have a letter, and I'm gonna use it under public commentary to read, and I would like for you all to know that this has been the whole reason because Panhandle Engineer, they work together, and this guy did not know where his tax paper was coming from. We all would know, you know, but he's new in it. So he's doing pretty good. But Chris, thank you for telling him who he was. I've been knowing it. But commissioners, I don't know if you knew about it. So that's the problem right now. It's wrong, it's not right, and he goes away with no definite answer, hanging around to be the last citizen almost to speak. He's just trying to understand. He can't comprehend that $900 on his property taxes. It's wrong. Some of you have been up there and voted for it. Now, I've already read all the records, so you don't have to deny nothing. It's free, you just go look it up and read. So it's very, very important, but I appreciate it. And Judy, I appreciate you bringing out some things today that I'm gonna do a lot of homework on, and I'll be back up here, and I'm certainly gonna give you some going over with it. So I feel free that these kind of things have caught us in a loop, and people are gonna pay for it. Thank you, Mayor, so much.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Any other public commentary on item 13? Hearing none, city manager, would you call the roll?

Commissioner Ward.

Mayor, can I say something? Yes. I'm sorry. Commissioner Peebles, go ahead.

Yes. So I just also wanted to say that thank you for amending the motion. That was a great idea by Mr. Lankford. I chuckled when you said that because if you didn't say it, I was going to say it because I didn't even think about that. So thank you, Corey, for that suggestion. that's a perfect way to do exactly what I was trying to articulate that if we're gonna do this, we need to do it. And so I appreciate that. While everyone was talking, just something to keep in mind, maybe we can talk about maybe doing like a hybrid where my issue, we didn't really get a chance to talk about this a lot, or maybe it was my fault. When Commissioner Ward first talked about the utility bill, My issue was, well, how are we going to handle the businesses like that? That seems really difficult to me to do that. But what if we just something to keep in mind for all of you? Maybe we can do some type of hybrid approach where the way that citizens that have private property. Maybe. Those, we can do rebates on that, or we can put them on the utility bill, but keep the non-advanced only for businesses so that we can handle that piece that way. I don't know. I'm just trying to go ahead and throw some stuff out there in the stratosphere to kind of think about if we're going to start talking about this as soon as fiscal year quarter one starts, let's go ahead and start thinking about things like that and Corey, if you want to get with me and brainstorm with me, I know this is a passion project for you. I think we've got the team up here to make this done, so let's get together and figure this thing out and get it done once and for all. But I just wanted to say that before we vote on it, since we're on that subject.

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

Yes. Commissioner Perno? Yes. Commissioner Peebles? Yes. Yes. Commissioner Tender? Yes. Mayor Lowry?

Yes. Thank you all for that. All right, we are down to number 14 now, discussion and possible approval of the roles and responsibilities and selection slash appointment process of the city clerk. As you know, the people of Lynnhaven, the voters... passed by 72, 73% our request for that for the city clerk. I believe it was number one. So now we have the authority to do so. We talked about this a little bit last meeting and now we're back here. We kind of have two kind of tracks to look at. One is a finance related and one is a administrative related. Those are kind of the two pathways that we have. So looking for thoughts, inputs from you guys, Ms. Hodges sent out the two position descriptions for us to look at. And now is a time for us to kind of come back and share our thoughts.

You can take my slide down, Harold. um i think the first thing we need to determine is do we want to go with the initial plan that we originally discussed with the city clerk slash treasurer i think that's the first thing we got to determine I'm a big proponent of it. I know you said you're not, and I don't understand why, because we talked about this multiple times. I just, there's a lot of benefits to it, because when you look at the past history of Lynn Haven, especially when it comes to finance, you want those checks and balances in place, and by putting it as independent from the city, putting it under an officer under the commission, I think helps keep those checks and balances in place.

Do we, have we advertised for applicants yet?

No, no, no. We're still in the initial phase where the five of us need to determine what our game plan is going to be here. So my thoughts are, and as I've said all along, y'all have heard me say this many times, if we hire internal, if we promote from within, We really have a couple of different contenders, right? If we go administrative or if we go financial for the core clerk, okay? If we take an existing full-time resource and promote it, we're not costing a whole new salary, right? You're taking a small amount of a fully funded salary line. And so we will be able to save, depending on what we do, let's just say 100,000 a year in the budget for that, right? We have a couple of different able-bodied folks that could plug and play there, depending on what skillset we're looking for. Do we wanna go with the administrative first? Or do we wanna go with the kind of, I'll say the bean counter, the financial, right? For the core function of the clerk. And that's kind of what we're talking about now. Once we get the core function of the clerk down between the five of us, Then we move into how do we fill this? Do we direct a point? Do we want to accept applications? I do not want to do a five or six month thing like we did with the city manager. I think we can do this relatively quickly and easily and transparently between the five of us. We just all kind of need to get on the same plan with what we're looking for.

I think we need to determine if we want clerk, treasurer, or just clerk. I think that's the first step.

Mayor.

I definitely think we just need a clerk that reports to the commission.

Okay, thank you for that. Commissioner Pernaut, what's your thoughts, sir?

We're creating a position that's gonna answer to the commission, correct?

We are, yes, sir.

So would they be fiscally responsible for the checks and balance of the commission?

you know, the ledger, so to speak. So if it's a clerk treasurer, yes, they will be responsible for all the revenue and expenditures that come to the city.

And if it's a clerk, an administrative clerk, Tiki could not have the title director of finance, but she could be a treasurer or a comptroller and report to that clerk. So yes, either way, either way we set it up with an administrative.

Mayor, if it's a ministerial clerk, the finance department does not report to the ministerial clerk. um we've got the charter review committee here it says very specifically does it not no sir it's not in the the duties are not specified in the charter if it's a ministerial clerk it no matter what the clerk reports directly to the commission if it's ministerial it's on the records portion if it's a treasury the finance side still falls under the city manager

Right.

Based on what, though?

The duties. A ministerial clerk is not related to finance.

Can you bring my slides up, Harold? See what you got. All right, go to the next slide. Next slide. Next slide. No, keep going. There's one that I think there's a definite or the roles and responsibilities. Keep going. Here it is. Well, this would be all the responsibilities for clerk treasurer. So if you look at that clerk and commission support, that's basically what you call ministerial duties of a city clerk.

The one on the left. On the left, yes. Okay. And then the center is your treasurer, basically, your financial manager, and then financial?

The financial management and control would be the treasurer piece.

Okay. So just to clarify though, city manager, we talked about this a little bit in the last meeting too. So is there a requirement if it's a clerk treasurer, right? That's the money person, that is a standalone report to the commission. But you just said, if I understood you right, that if the clerk is an administrative, that the finance person, the director of finance would need to stay under you as the city manager. That's correct. And my question is, what drives that? Is that city charter, is that state law, or what is that?

No, sir, that's just functions of what that clerk does. If you want a clerk that handles the finances and has the financial checks and balances, you would have a clerk slash treasurer, which is what I assumed the whole point of this was in the last year. I mean, now that the voters have said they want to want a clerk, I'll gladly take my name off the checkbook and put the city clerk treasurer on there. So as of my duties now, city manager slash clerk, I sign the checks along with you. If it's a clerk slash treasurer, the clerk and the mayor would sign the checks. So that is the way to define the checks and balances. You take the city manager out of the finance portion.

tracking my only Clarification question because I'm just not understanding. I want to make sure I understand what you're saying If the city commission was to assign say talking about we're talking about the two options, right? So we have an administrative clerk or we have a financial clerk treasurer right the bean counter slash clerk if you have an administrative clerk or What is there if the city commission reassigns the head bean counter, for lack of a better term, the treasurer person, under the supervision of the administrative clerk? How is that?

That would defy the duties of any ministerial clerk in the history of municipal. It's on your pay scale, for example, in the job descriptions. You wouldn't have a finance director making $30,000 more, $40,000 more than a ministerial clerk. The ministerial clerk does not control finances.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Doesn't look like it.

Traditionally, a ministerial clerk is the record keeper, prepares the agendas, posts the meetings, produces the minutes. and maintains the record for the commission. That includes following any of the public records request. A clerk treasurer has that function under the office of the clerk, but the clerk treasurer has a higher level of responsibility in education because they are dealing with all of the revenues, the cash, the money, both the expenses. So it's a much broader position with more responsibility.

And there's a lot more certifications that are involved in that too.

So what I hear you saying is they're a treasurer first and then a clerk.

They have the clerk function for the records within that office. Okay.

That's what I was missing. So thank you for that.

Mayor, do you want?

Well, I wish I could explain this better. I have it in my head, but if you think about whenever we, like, us as the commission, we set the priorities. We say, like we did tonight, we went all over the budget and saying, hey, this is what you got. Now the city manager has direction on how to work all his operations, administrations, with the budget that he has. now if he whenever him and the department heads all have to spend money that's all going to have to go through the city clerk slash treasurer and that's what creates the checks and balances because if somebody accuses to the city manager of stealing money well it's going to be very difficult to do when you get a clerk treasurer so not just to protect him but it protects the city too so that there's no misspending going on and mismanagement or corruption or anything like that. This is the way I look at it. When you look at the situation we have with Michael White and that, how apt would that financial manager or the city clerk would be to come out and say, hey, something illegal or nothing's going on. If that's their boss, and that's their primary income and they need that income, do you think they're going to say anything?

No. I would like to think they would.

But if they're a clerk treasurer, no. But did it happen? It didn't happen. But if you had a clerk treasurer that is an officer that worked for the commission, the expectation is to tell us what happened. And if it doesn't, then it's our responsibility to terminate them and then hire someone else that will do that.

Right. The duties that I read that Jennifer sent out, you sent out that sheet, isn't that something, who's doing all that now? Isn't it CJ? Doesn't she do all those items?

As the clerk designated, yes ma'am. But I am the city clerk. I'm the city manager slash clerk. So she is delegated to prepare the agendas, post the meetings, keep the minutes, and all of those things. But if you want a true checks and balances system, you separate the city manager and the clerk functions with utilizing the treasury side.

And like you were talking about with bidding, remember you brought up about opening the bid and all that stuff? and you wanted the checks and balances and that opening, right? You could even delegate the city clerk-treasurer, even though you got a procurement manager, which still would fall under the city manager, we could put that in the roles and responsibilities, which I think I did in my, where the clerk-treasurer will go to the opening of the bid to make sure that the city is doing what they're supposed to be doing on top of what the procurement manager's already doing, and that creates more checks and balances. that's good to know and just if you if you keep going to some slides there's one that's got like some lines and a bunch of steps there it is this one this is kind of like the process that would follow whenever they need to um do some procurement okay just to clarify so there was a question about what the charter and the the charter just states that was approved and that will be sent to the state uh

It says a city clerk serves as the official custodian record keeper of the city responsible for maintaining all public documents. Clerk of city elections is required by law. The court performs these and other such duties independently in accordance with state law established policies and other directions from the city commission. So by charter, it's a, ministerial position that can be increased to be the treasurer. Right.

And that was my question. And that was one of my questions why that last line you read, additional duties by the commission, that's why that line's in there. And that's why we determined not to write it out yet and strictly define define it because let's say it doesn't work out. We have the flexibility and opportunity to change it back if we wanted to and say this is not working out. But let's say we do this for a couple, two, three years and we're like, this is working out great. Then we can put those things in the charter to define all that when we know this is how we want it to look. Because we need that flexibility.

If I may. Go ahead. As far as education, I mean, do you have, I know you, your education, do you have the education to do all that?

She does now.

Are you a licensed CPA? I am not a CPA. She is not.

But it's in the government world, it's fund accounting, which is different from CPA accounting, personal accounting. Okay. If you read in the position descriptions, it has minimum qualifications and preferred qualifications for both positions, and they are different.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sam, what's your initial first blush thoughts here as we talk about administrative versus treasurer?

So my idea is kind of that just like what Chris does as a city manager right now, the treasurer would just Be ultimately the person that signs off on the checks. That doesn't mean that they have to do all the financial work. It just means that the financial side of things is going to be more directly connected to. Reporting to the Commission so you still would have all the stuff that's being done right now at the clerk on the ministerial side, but also you have that final sign off on the check. Signing off on the check is the big thing, right?

So right?

So if we go with the treasurer versus the ministerial, that's not going to, in my opinion, change any, it's really not going to change anything in terms of candidates or requirements. It's more so the function of the job. And if the whole purpose of a clerk is to be checks and balances, that signing of the check is what matters. So I've also talked to multiple commissioners from multiple cities. And they all have different opinions. There's no unified decision. But based on what I've gathered for a city our size, the treasurer clerk seems to be, in my opinion, the best route to go.

Okay. Thank you for that. Commissioner Pernault.

I'm fine.

Yeehaw either way.

Let's move on. All right. Motion and vote.

So we have everybody's initial kind of first blush inputs. What are y'all looking for in terms of filling it? Do y'all want to do an internal, as we've talked about?

Mayor, before you do that, I would ask that you make a motion to decide what you want to do, and then we can bring it back next meeting as the official job description, and then you all can do it instead of getting into this tonight of how do you want to post it, and we need to know which position do you want to post first, and then we can establish the job description and have an item on the next agenda.

So one point of clarification on that, are we looking, and this is one thing I guess we need to give you as staff, Internal or external? Internal saves money, but external, you could do, I guess, cast the net for internal and external. So what are y'all's thoughts?

We need to know what job first, ministerial or treasury clerk.

Right, we're looking for a motion on whether it's a ministerial position as the charter states or if you're expanding it to the treasurer.

We'll get to that second question. I'll just make the motion to approve city clerk slash treasurer. Second.

I have a motion and a second for a city clerk slash treasurer. Any thoughts or inputs from the public tonight? Come on up, Mr. Scray. Should be a hot mic.

Okay. I'm probably going to butcher this a little bit, but I just asked Corey to kind of explain it to me because I've never actually been stationed at a joint base. I think he's more familiar with it. But like you basically, you're setting up almost like two wing commanders, like the commission is one wing commander and then the city manager, even though he reports to you all, it's kind of like another one. And so you're separating out those duties where one of them is responsible for the entire base. He's going to make sure the whole city keeps functioning and running. but you guys are going to make sure all the policies and procedures are getting done correctly, right? So by having the clerk treasurer, so I'm just going to use real people because they're present, right? So you can, and it's a football analogy too, you can hire an offensive or defensive head coach. So you could hire somebody like Kiki to run the organization, but that person at the top, they're going to be having to be making sure both clerk and financial duties are going correctly. so that person that's at the top are you the one are you do you want them to one be doing all the numbers right on the inverse you could also hire somebody like cj to be at the top making sure that the clerk and financial stuff all goes correctly so think of that as like offensive and defensive head coaching whoever you hire they're not going to be the perfect candidate that's clerk and treasurer because she doesn't do clerk stuff and she doesn't do treasurer stuff currently right you only get one or the other if you find somebody that can do both congratulations you've probably found yourself a unicorn you should probably clone them Ultimately, you're going to have to pick somebody that has a strength in one area or the other and expect and direct that person to hire the other strength. It's like an owner of an NFL team saying, hey, you're an offensive coach. I need you to go hire this guy as defensive coordinator, right, because I'm not going to have a crappy defense. That's where you guys are going to be at with trying to figure out who to hire. My only qualm I have with that whole structure, and I know Jamie and I have talked about this, I really, really, based on my experience in procurement, I really think procurement should not report directly on the same chain. And my reason for that is because when I was in the Air Force, we in contracting did not report to finance or the wing commander or the inspector general. We reported to the mission support group commander.